My biggest disappointment at last year's South by Southwest was missing Black Moth Super Rainbow's sets. Hustling to the Thirsty Nickel for my last chance to catch them, I encountered a shut door. I could see the band playing to a packed house in the corner of the country-western-themed venue, but I couldn't hear anything. The crowd's rapturous faces and movements rubbed salt in the wound, so I hastily split the scene.

This was a bummer because Black Moth Super Rainbow have been making some of the most enchanting psychedelic music of the past few years. Dandelion Gum (2007) and the new Eating Us, in particular, tint the stereo field a decidedly alluring hue of tangerine, chartreuse, and mauve. The sound is naive and full of wonder, surfeited in oddly glittering analog-synth textures that will toll nostalgic bells for anyone who's munched magic mushrooms to the splendid emanations of Bruce Haack, Tonto's Expanding Head Band, and Boards of Canada.

BMSR's songs are concise and hooky, but peculiarly out of focus, smeared into a hazier dimension via technology—and a creator—that seems imbued with an otherworldly spirit. While mastermind Tobacco swears drugs play no role in his creative process, his lyrics abound with supernatural phenomena and synesthetic imagery. "Lollipopsichord" off Dandelion Gum exemplifies this, perfectly merging candy with instrument. You want to live in these songs, which offer a vivid, fresh form of escapism.

But who are Black Moth Super Rainbow? The live band metamorphosed out of Tobacco's previous project, satanstompingcaterpillars, in Pittsburgh in 2003. The members wear their mystery shroud well. In an age of rampant fame whoredom and internet-fabulous flashes in the motherboard, this quintet eschew band photos (or ones that reveal their visages) and real names in favor of awry-acid-trip artwork and whimsical monikers like Iffernaut, the Seven Fields of Aphelion, Father Hummingbird, and Ryan Graveface. Power Pill Fist sadly won't be making the trip this tour.

Tobacco assures that BMSR's "mystique" isn't contrived. "I just think it's not important to talk about yourself, when it should be about what we're making," he argues. "[The] mystique has been created for us by everyone else. We don't like showing our faces or talking about ourselves, but don't strive to be mysterious, either."

Tobacco—the name, he says, derives "from a character that freaked me out as a kid"—sings through a vocoder, adding yet another layer of obfuscation to the enigma. (Note that Tobacco essentially is Black Moth Super Rainbow in the studio; he uses a band to realize his music in live settings.) Of course, all of this aesthetic camouflage wouldn't mean squat if BMSR's music didn't resonate. And, man, does it resonate.

The most common impression that comes to mind while listening to BMSR: It's like Boards of Canada repeatedly remixing, with subtle variations, the Beatles' languid masterpiece "Strawberry Fields Forever." BOC's predilection for analog-synths that willfully wobble out of tune and melodies that trigger an unpinpointable wistfulness seemingly has had a major impact on BMSR's sound. Electronic- instrument inventor/genius Bruce Haack's songs of childlike awe and ominous sweetness color Tobacco's aesthetic, too.

"I think Boards of Canada had a huge influence in the beginning, but not at all anymore," Tobacco asserts. "Maybe even too much of an influence on a record like [2003's] Falling Through a Field. I could only do so much of that, though, and I think [my sound has] strayed really far since. I've never heard Bruce Haack, but people bring him up a lot."

In BMSR's music, a tension between dissolution—almost everything sounds as if it's melting and dissolving out of focus—and an earthy funkiness exists. Apparently, this paradoxical structure in their songs is simply a happy accident. "It's just me trying to get it to sound good to my ears," Tobacco says.

Tobacco's prominent use of vocoder lends his tunes a strange, androgynous fragility. Unlike most singers, who try to sound less human/more robotic with vocoders, Tobacco conveys more emotion through its effects. "It's just my best way of being able to sing," he shrugs. "I can make any melody I want without having to feel uncomfortable in my own voice."

You can hear that voice put to more lustrous use on Eating Us, which benefits from the production of Dave Fridmann (the Flaming Lips, MGMT, Sleater-Kinney). The acclaimed producer adds high-definition vividness to BMSR's heretofore faded, blurred productions, boldfacing and italicizing the murky details. While Eating Us often billows into orchestral majesty, it loses none of BMSR's quirky charm and the songs here exude an even more striking beauty. For example, the instrumental "Smile the Day After Today" is currently the most gorgeous song in the world.

"I wanted someone who could do the opposite of what I've always done," Tobacco explains regarding his decision to hire Fridmann. "He knows atmosphere and space really well, and drums probably better than anyone. I could never engineer anything like that. I don't know if I'll ever do another hi-fi studio record, but if I do, he'd be my first choice. I feel more at home doing it myself, but I felt almost like I had something to prove or disprove this time around."

While the world's hipper minds are starting to turn on to BMSR, Tobacco's 2008 solo album for Anticon, Fucked Up Friends, deserves serious headphone time, too. Bearing BMSR's florid analog-synth and mellotron embroidery, the tracks here stress Tobacco's keen grasp of funk while favoring a grittier, grimier textural palette.

"I look at BMSR stuff as what I'd like to hear a whole band play or ideas that I don't mind letting other people have input on," Tobacco delineates. "The Tobacco stuff right now is all my grossest urges, or maybe what I really want to do, as opposed to what might be best for the listener."

BMSR and Tobacco's ascent to the festival circuit and blogosphere adulation has been one of the most encouraging musical developments of recent years. But it hasn't gone to Tobacco's warped head—yet.

"I'm surprised anyone is listening at all sometimes."