British Sea Power is nothing if not idiosyncratic. Hailing from the British coastal city of Brighton, the band is renowned for its vintage nautical uniforms and quirky shows where the stage is bedecked in foliage and tree branches.

The band will play at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Norman Music Festival on the West Main Stage.

The group's songs are filled with eclectic references ranging from ornithology to an Antarctic ice shelf. In short, British Sea Power is unequivocally one of the most eccentric, cerebral and flat-out interesting indie-rock bands making music today.

It's odd, then, to discover that the band members " Yan, Hamilton, Noble and Woody (yes, they go by single-name monikers) " call Edmond home when they are touring the U.S.

Because British Sea Power is managed by Scott Booker, co-founder of the Edmond-based World's Fair music management group, the act spends several days in Oklahoma between tour dates every few weeks. It's given the guys an opportunity to visit such decidedly non-Anglophilic sites as the National Cowboy Hall of Fame & Western Heritage Museum, Edna's Restaurant & Club and the AT&T Bricktown Ballpark.

MUSIC FESTIVAL
Norman will join the group's sightseeing list as British Sea Power takes the stage Saturday night during the first-ever Norman Music Festival.

The show arrives on the heels of the outfit's third and latest album, "Do You Like Rock Music?" Buoyed by stirring anthems, reverb-fueled guitars and choral swells, the disc has earned critical raves since its release earlier this year. It also marks a new stage of the band's evolution. Its first two efforts, 2003's "The Decline of British Sea Power" and 2005's "Open Season," invited comparisons to such moody Eighties Britpop acts as Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen. If British Sea Power occasionally belied its influences in the past, the gritty but rich sound of "Do You Like Rock Music?" sufficiently quashes any notions of derivativeness. " Phil Bacharach