Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Koko, London

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah do it their own eccentric way. With the help of a review on the American website Pitchfork Media and some grassroots blog support, the Brooklyn- and Philadelphia-based quintet sold 25,000 copies of their self-released album, dispatching them from their living rooms.

Rolling Stone heralded the outfit as the "Hot New Band for 2005" and home is now the Wichita label, in a roster that includes the equally distinctive Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bright Eyes and Euros Childs of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci (and the slightly less distinctive Bloc Party).

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah played to a 1,500-strong crowd for a sell-out show at KoKo. The twins Lee (guitar and keyboard) and Tyler Sargent (bass), and the sullen-looking singer Alec Ounsworth, appeared too caught up in the music to notice. As Sean Greenhalgh beat the skins, the resident pretty boy, Robbie Guertin, grinned widely, ecstatically wielding his tambourine or stabbing at his keyboard. But he was the one band member clearly having fun, and interaction with the audience was at a minimum.

CYHSY started with an authoritative reading of the album opener "Let the Cool Goddess Rust Away", which recalls Nico-era Velvet Underground. But the show really took off with "Is This Love?", in which Ounsworth proved that he can deliver an unmannered vocal, if only sporadically.

It is the front man's voice that has divided the critics: best described as a "yodelling" or "yelping" sound, you either love it or hate it. It's a style patented by David Byrne in the late-Seventies band Talking Heads but here it is taken several steps further out into the realms of incomprehensibility.

It's certainly a refreshing change from the clarity-at-all costs Chris Martin school of vocals that has proved so fashionable - and so characterless - of late.

The folk-psychedelia of the band's catchiest and most infectious song, "The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth", came next and probably came several songs too early in the set. Peaking too soon, the gig struggled to surpass the brilliance of these two show-stoppers.

One or two of the poppier numbers did rouse the audience, but it took the strategic dropping of balloons from the balconies to really get the crowd going. If audience enthusiasm and yelled song requests seemed in short supply, perhaps it was because many of the songs, as wordily obscure as their titles suggest, lack immediacy.

Nevertheless, "Details of the War", one of the flatter songs on the album, works better live, building intensity via the Velvets-like droning guitars and folky harmonica playing. Ounsworth, strumming his guitar and alternatively blowing into his harp and singing in his cracked voice, conjured up the image of the young Bob Dylan. So it was no surprise when the following number - and the most affecting song on the night - was a cover of a Dylan tune, the beautiful "Love Minus Zero/No Limit".

"Home on Ice", reminiscent of mid-period Cure, followed. Then it was time for the marvellously titled "Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood", which in turn is heavily in debt to Talking Heads. For the finale, the support band, Dr Dog, joined Ounsworth and Co on stage for a version of Neil Young's "Helpless".

What singles out CYHSY, though, is the way they make their influences distinctly their own, coming up with a beguiling mix of indie-folk-funk, off-kilter melody and garbled words - words that Ounsworth alone should have the right to sing. The attempts of one misguided punter to sing along - his attempt consisting of a "yah yah aaaarrrrr" wail - was truly painful.

The idiosyncratic Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are always likely to inspire a strong reaction, but when it comes to singalongs, let's leave it to Robbie Williams.