May 30 (Bloomberg) -- “Avert your eyes from all of this,” Grizzly Bear sang at New York’s Town Hall the other night.

It’s hard to do when this Brooklyn band performs the hypnotic “Southern Point” from its new album “Veckatimest” (Warp Records). Playing before a sold-out house, they sounded like choirboys on a dark mission.

Why hypnotic?

The insistent modulating chords played by Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen, for one thing. The dreamlike harmonies when drummer Christopher Bear and bassist Chris Taylor chime in. And the ambling lyrics that suggest an emotional journey more than a narrative tale.

Grizzly Bear is having a big moment, similar to the one experienced last year by Fleet Foxes, another indie group with silken voices and subcutaneous lyrics. The band has graduated from Williamsburg venues to sold-out houses on a national tour that will keep them on the road through November.

While their previous CD, “Yellow House,” started the cult, “Veckatimest” is winning effusive praise from mainstream critics despite the secret-password title (it refers to an uninhabited island off Cape Cod).

Grizzly Bear unselfconsciously references bands from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, Talking Heads and Cowboy Junkies. Rossen and Droste add jagged edges to choruses that might otherwise be chorales, and where the melodies go, the lyrics follow.

“God, let it go, it doesn’t mean a thing,” they sing on the ironically titled “Cheerleader.”

‘Hit Me’

On both the album and in concert, they’re accompanied for that one and a few other songs by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, an all-female choir that lifts the singing into the ether -- up there in the brooding clouds, dodging lightning bolts and cringing amid the thunderclaps.

For one of two encores, Droste sang “He Hit Me,” a 1960s girl-group paean to abuse (“He hit me/and it felt like a kiss”) which took on a different dimension coming from a gay man. It didn’t make the words any more palatable, but that’s progressive rock for you: Leave your expectations (and your optimism) at the door. The payoff can be unexpectedly exhilarating.

The opening group was Here We Go Magic, which will be accompanying Grizzly on some of the tour. They’re not yet in the Bear’s league.

The Grizzly Bear tour moves to Washington, Philadelphia, Boston and beyond in coming weeks. Information: http://www.grizzly-bear.net/live.

(Jeremy Gerard is an editor for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Jeremy Gerard in New York at jgerard2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 29, 2009 22:00 EDT