Members of the Brooklyn-based indie band Grizzly Bear, from left: Christopher Bear, Ed Droste, Daniel Rossen and Chris Taylor. The band released their third full-length studio album, Veckatimest, in May. (Tom Hines/Warp Records)

Until recently, when a late-night talk show host spoke of a "grizzly bear" as a featured guest, viewers braced themselves for the sort of wacky Animal Planet antics adored by Johnny Carson. But in the last few years, a new subspecies hailing from Brooklyn has supplanted its furry namesake in the wilds of post-prime time TV.

The Grizzly Bear in question is a four-headed beast that creates gently psychedelic art pop. The band's invasion of late-night airwaves began innocently enough on Last Call with Carson Daly in 2007; the group then made a charming daytime cameo backing singer Leslie Feist when she performed 1, 2, 3, 4 on the Today Show that December. By the next spring, Craig Ferguson was growling out the name of the harmonious band with delight, followed by Conan O'Brien and David Letterman, the latter of whom brought the Grizzly crew back for a repeat performance this summer.

The beauty of Grizzly Bear's songs lies in the band's skill in making precise, delicate material sound bold and bracing.

Television presenters aren't the only ones who have fallen under Grizzly Bear's spell. The group's most recent album,Veckatimest, debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard charts when it came out in May. Not bad for a humble indie art-folk act that makes ambitiously, almost defiantly pretty music.

The unexpected popularity of Veckatimest capped off a cycle of "surreal" accomplishments according to vocalist and guitarist Ed Droste. On the apparent advice of our girl Feist, globally minded folk legend Paul Simon invited Grizzly Bear to join him during a month-long residency at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2008. And Radiohead handpicked the group as an opening act on last summer's North American tour. Nearly 12 months after the fact, Droste still sounds stunned by it all.

"It's like I've been told about these two things that supposedly happened, but they still don't feel real," Droste explains in a recent phone interview. "And the top 10 thing, being on the charts like that – we were totally shocked. For a band like us, it was a huge deal. I heard that my childhood radio station in Boston was playing [lead single] Two Weeks, which was pretty exciting. It's so rare that modern rock radio takes a chance on playing something [unconventional]. Mostly it's all dominated by major label artists and run by payola schemes."

Droste founded Grizzly Bear in 2003 and released one album (Horn of Plenty ) before expanding his bedroom folk project into a full-fledged band a year later, when drummer Chris Bear, guitarist Daniel Rossen and bassist Chris Taylor became permanent members. While Droste's earlier songs adhered to a fractured folk template that could sound murky and muted on record, Veckatimest is a collection of densely textured compositions that lead you through dazzling dynamic shifts. The beauty of these songs often lies in the group's ability to make precise and delicate material sound bold and bracing. The album is a heady assault of oblique melodies, luxurious orchestral arrangements and multi-part harmonies.

(Warp Records) The members of Grizzly Bear have a knack for borrowing iconic (and occasionally arcane) conventions from 20th-century pop music and making them sound fresh, often by reframing them in song structures that have more in common with weather systems than verse-chorus-verse pop. Knife (from 2006's Yellow House) reinvigorates a doo-wop strut by injecting airy falsetto vocals and barbershop quartet harmonies;Cheerleader (from Veckatimest) marries a lurching post-punk bassline to a dreamy children's chorale. You can hear the influence of modern classical in Veckatimest's play with counterpoint and orchestration.

One of Grizzly Bear's strengths is how gifted the band is at translating its intricate studio material into enthralling live shows. Once you've seen Droste and co. play, you understand why those talk-show producers are so eager to book them as guests.

"We always go through a head-scratcher when we're trying to figure out how to put together our live shows," Droste confesses. "We only have four people with only so many sets of hands, and we don't like relying on a sampler, though we do use a few samples here and there. Generally speaking, we want to keep it as live and as [much of a] four-piece as possible.

"Reinterpreting songs can be fun, though there are still some songs on the new record that we don't feel comfortable doing live. Southern Point is probably the most challenging new track. And Dory, we only feel comfortable doing it with a string quartet, or completely stripped down, like if we're playing it on a radio show."

Musician Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear performs in New York City. (Cory Schwartz/Getty Images)Droste and his bandmates have an astounding ability to adapt to different venues. In the last year and a half, they've performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a concert hall, a quaint courtyard-cum-beer garden in Austin, Texas, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with their own orchestral ensemble (conducted by new music boy wonder Nico Muhly and featuring Canadian friend and colleague Owen "Final Fantasy" Pallett) and at massive multi-day events like this weekend's Virgin Festival. And then there are those huge stadiums full of Radiohead fans.

"Weirdly, when the shows get really big, it's less nerve-wracking," offers Droste, who claims he was petrified of singing live when he first started the band. "We end up doing a kind of stripped-down performance, and there's more of a disconnect between you and the audience. And often, [you're not playing for] your crowd – like, it was Radiohead's crowd, for instance. So if they like us, they like us, if they don't, they don't. There's way more pressure on us when it's our own show."

Grizzly Bear play the Virgin Festival in Toronto Aug. 29.

Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.