You don’t listen to The Ruby Suns, not like you do most bands at most gigs. I mean, they’re up there, playing music, but the way this music is communicated feels unreal.

I know: it’s like dunking your head into a paddling pool on the hottest day of the summer when you’ve just got in from riding the Tube: refreshing, and everything becomes a bubbling mumble – the buzz of the outside, the hum of the television just inside the door, the voice of your mother asking if you want a drink. Yes, yes I do. You want to stay under so do so, for as long as possible, letting the air in your lungs bleed out slow; so relaxed, so utterly at peace. This is what experiencing The Ruby Suns is like. Music for paddling pools. Music from another place, a place so near yet so far so often. Music that doesn’t sit in a neat box. Yeah, it’s a kind of twisted pop, but defiantly otherworldly of slant.

It’s barely worth criticising the turnout – not brilliant – as it’s been noted here; the many will come around as they always do once a sleeper hit gathers steam rather than moss, as Sea Lion, released earlier this year to practically unanimous acclaim, seems certain to be. Reviewed here, it’s this year’s Person Pitch, perhaps, all another-continent vibes bucking beneath rippling melodies and enrapturing refrains. Get sucked into it and it’s unlikely anything else released in 2008 will go around as many times.

In the centre of the soothing storm is Ryan McPhun, an American now based in New Zealand whose associates’ accents suggest they’re natives of the islands furthest from these; part of the Sub Pop family stateside, they’ve the look, the feel, the sounds, of a great underground sensation just waiting to be plucked from relative obscurity and propelled into a bigger league, a la the recent promotions of No Age, HEALTH, and before them Animal Collective. That time will come, too.

It has to – music as purely wonderful as this can’t not find more homes to nestle within, more senses to spark into joy, more souls to nourish with gleeful experiments in found-sound samples and droning, echo-laced vocals. You want specifics: go read our feature on the band. You want a first impression to savour? See the band before they jet from these shores and step into what I’ve only just climbed back out from.

Play under sprinklers, dance like a child, swept away by the sort of special music that should be cherished en masse; get dizzy while sugar-rushing, close your eyes and dive right in. The best splash you’ll have for a while.