Call it music's version of the Stockholm Syndrome. Follow in the footsteps of the Hives, Soundtrack of Our Lives and Mando Diao to North America, and a Swedish band is bound to get lumped in with them.

"We've read reviews that are, like, 'This is a really good garage band from Sweden.' And I don't think we're a garage band at all," says frontman Adam Olenius, whose band plays some of its first headlining gigs this side of the Atlantic tonight at Toronto's Lee's Palace and tomorrow in Montreal. "It's lazy journalism - not really trying to listen to it, just saying 'They're from Sweden, they play a kind of rock music - let's put 'em in there with the other bands.'

"I think the other side of Swedish music right now is bands like the Concretes that have a more dreamy pop sound that really is big."

Much as they appear to trade in the same sort of jangly indie-pop, though, it might not be fair to lump the Shout Out Louds in with the female-fronted Concretes, either. While the sunny melodies on their North American debut, Howl Howl Gaff Gaff, evoke comparisons, they're juxtaposed against angsty lyrics and vocals that seem to draw more inspiration from the U.S. indie scene - an influence noticeable on tracks such as Please Please Please, where Olenius sounds rather like a Scandinavian version of Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst.

"I like the contrast - doing pop songs I try to damage a bit with noise and darker lyrics," Olenius says. "The lyrics are more my inside personality, and the music is more my outside. It's like a split personality."

For public consumption, the more upbeat side of that personality seems to be winning out. Despite a recent wave of buzz that's included major-label support, visits to both Letterman and Leno and an opening slot touring with Kings of Leon, Olenius and his bandmates have quickly earned a reputation for not taking themselves too seriously. It's an approach Olenius attributes to an extension of the do-it-yourself ethic they've applied to the recording process.

"I think it's more interesting when there's no record company between the artist and the audience," he says. "That's why we do videos and cover art and everything by ourselves. We're just trying to do something different - be honest about what we do. Maybe there's a bit of anti-rock to it - how a record should sound or how a Web site should look or how a biography should be written."

All this Scandinavian charm won't mean much, of course, without the songs to go with it. Olenius is clearly itching to get back into the studio - and suggests that more ambitious tracks on Howl Howl Gaff Gaff like the comparatively sombre Seagull (the most recently recorded song on the album) hint at the band's future.

"I still like writing melodies. I still like writing pop songs. I do," he says. "I just want to try to write a little different."