Let's forget the band's name for a moment and talk about Menomena's music.

Never mind. Let's start with the name because it's all you're thinking about, right?

This is what it's not: A semantic hybrid of "men" and "phenomena" (though it's pronounced that way) — but go ahead and think so. The guys don't mind.

If you think it's a nod to the Muppets. ...

Never mind.

Let's just say this: (Are you listening, Jim Henson's people?) The name is whatever you want it to be, so let's go with our first guess: male phenomena.

And that's not too far off.

The guys who make up experimental pop/rock trio Menomena — Danny Seim, Justin Harris and Brent Knopf — are their own kind of extraordinary. Maybe calling them a phenomenon is taking things a bit too far, but Menomena, playing at Loft Gallery and Lounge tomorrow night, is certainly worth keeping an eye on.

So far, the band, whose members all play a number of instruments and use music-mixing software designed by them to get their signature multi-layered sound, have been doing time in the critics' corner.

Menomena's three albums have received ridiculous amounts of praise from every kind of critic — from the populist Boston Globe critics to the hard-to-please Pitchfork people — but the band is still virtually unknown to the masses. But we can't help but think that if Radiohead had released the same music and called it "In Rainbows," people would have been all over it. Or at least rushing to legally download it for free.

Menomena's music sort of defies category (hence the "experimental pop/rock" label), but drummer Danny Seim says they play pop music. And they do ... and they don't. It's like Ween without the pot, Radiohead without the histrionics and Modest Mouse without the angst. Or something like that.

Seim spoke to The Advertiser as he was standing outside in the first snowfall of the season in Portland, Ore.

First things first. I hear you used to live in Hawai'i.

Yeah. I actually lived in Wahiawa for seven years. I moved to Oregon from Hawai'i. My dad is a grade-school principal and he worked out there at Trinity Lutheran School, which I attended from grades two to eight.

Have you ever played Hawai'i before?

No, this is our first time. We're really excited. I went to my first concert there, though.

Who'd you see?

It was the Christian heavy-metal band Stryper. Remember Stryper? Maybe that was my early inspiration. Now I'm going to come back and make a debut of my own.

Let's talk about the band, specifically the name. It rhymes with "phenomena," right? Or is it more Muppet-like?

You're right. We try to shy away from the Muppet thing — we're worried about Jim Henson Incorporated suing.

So there's no Muppet influence.

Oh, no, there is. Muppets and Stryper are our two big influences.

Awesome. Any other influences?

The obvious ones ring true for us — The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and all the classic rock bands. For me personally, it was actually Radio Free Hawaii. That was really what exposed me to all kinds of music because it was the only place you could hear Fugazi and Johnny Cash back to back. That station really set me on a course to appreciating all kinds of music.

Wow.That's really cool.

Your music is generally categorized as "experimental pop/rock." Is that how you categorize yourself?

I think that's the easiest way to say it. It's definitely pop.

I said "pop" not "pot" — I just wanted to clarify.

We all love pop music. But I think we also try to incorporate as many different instruments into the music as possible. If there is an experimental factor, it's probably just the fact that we just have a lot of stuff flying around. We try not to discriminate too much — we're not just guitar, bass and drums, even though it is just the three of us.

Do you all play more than one instrument?

Yeah, we try to. Especially while we're recording and practicing. We try not to limit ourselves. It's the "jack of all trades, master of none" thing. But if we were to be masters of something, it would be the piano, bass and drums. Outside of those, we just kind of love learning things.

As far as live performances go, we do whatever the three of us can pull off.

Can you explain (the computer program) Deeler to me? I don't really get it.

Brent is a computer nerd, and he loves the programming side of things. He developed software that basically allows you to create loops of music that can be played and recorded over. It lets us write and record music simultaneously. By the end of a 30-minute session we have this huge layered piece that we can break apart later and then rearrange to make actual songs. There's the recording side of it and the arranging side of it, where we take the loops and rearrange them to make linear pop songs.

I get it. Nicely done.

Your latest album, "Friend and Foe," seems to be more packed with stuff — more vocal dimension, more music sections, more ideas. Is that a change of direction for you guys, or just an album-specific thing?

Our first record was the first thing we'd ever recorded together. Back then, I think we were really conscious of what we could pull off as a three-piece live band, and we had more defined roles. We liked that because it made the transition to playing venues a little easier.

With the new one, I think we sort of lost sight of that and started writing stuff without worrying about how we would perform it live. And then we finished the album and we were like, how are we going to perform this stuff?

And do you find it difficult to perform material from the third album?

At first, for sure. The learning curve was pretty rough. Unlike Phil Collins and Don Henley, I can't sing and play drums, so it was definitely something to get used to.

There are parts of this album, especially on the back half, that come off as very abstract and deep, in the post-modern sense of the word, yet you obviously don't take yourselves too seriously.

Right. And I don't think the last part of the record was intentionally abstract. I just think that when we're doing these Deeler sessions, we can take it in any direction because it's so easy to start the layering process. It makes the songs pretty diverse because we're not restricted to singer, songwriter and acoustic guitar.

You record label's Web site describes you guys as "mysterious and creative individuals." Mysterious, huh? Is that what you're going for?

Only when we're in drag on Friday nights. Every other day we're boring.