A review of The Velvet Underground & Nico in Boston's first rockzine, Vibrations, suggested listeners put themselves in the frame of mind they might assume for Indian music. Of course, the Velvet Underground's narcotic repetitions-- influenced by John Cale's association with minimalist composer La Monte Young-- struck the mainline for a new style of pop, similarly connected to raga's enveloping drone. Uh, maybe you've heard of Can, Brian Eno, Sonic Youth, or My Bloody Valentine?

When listening to A Sunny Day in Glasgow, it's perhaps best to put yourself in the frame of mind you might assume for those bands, too. Sure, this brother-sister trio aren't in the same league, but they're one of several exciting young acts keeping up ambient-pop's ethereal flame (a few years after M83 and others put their electronic spin on Loveless swoon). Where Atlanta's Deerhunter echo the psych-rock meditations of Spacemen 3, these Philadelphia tweegazers lose themselves in the trebly haze of early Creation Records, pop melodies barely shining through all the layers of noise. Then they kill you with ramshackle C86 adorableness.

On Scribble Mural Comic Journal, A Sunny Day in Glasgow sculpt fluffy electronic textures, overdubbed funhouse-mirror guitars, and Kate-Bush-down-a-well vocals into a debut album that warps (and greatly improves upon) last year's self-released The Sunniest Day Ever EP. The project's founder, Ben Daniels of local "supergroup" King Kong Ding Dong, twists the sweetness in identical twins Lauren and Robin's voices into eerie new forms, whether off-kilter dial tones to open the thick-- and, hey, ringing-- "A Mundane Phonecall to Jack Parsons", echoing raindrops on "Our Change Into Rain Is No Change at All (Talkin' 'bout Us)", or stereo-panning schoolgirl chants amid alien guitars on "C'Mon" . The sisters' soft breathiness is most, well, breathtaking on cosmopolitan teenage lament "The Horn Song", or with gliding guitar, pebbly beats, and a moonstruck melody on album highlight "5:15 Train".

Within A Sunny Day in Glasgow's aesthetic, their singing is less the point than the sonic environment they help create (for those gorgeous, submerged tunes!). So deceptively casual opener "Wake Up Pretty" dreams up the surreal-life dance party that is the ensuing "No. 6 Van Karman Street", and "Ghost in the Graveyard" begins with the pounding drums and background dissonance of an impassioned anthem by actual Glaswegians the Twilight Sad, then never develops into one. Meanwhile, "Panic Attacks Are What Make Me 'Me'" swells into a jingling alarum, shifting the details gradually enough to encourage what Eno called "perceptual drift," and then suddenly changing direction. Dizzy? No, dazzled.

As with Deerhunter's Cryptograms, A Sunny Day in Glasgow's debut becomes clearer as it nears an end. Album closer "The Best Summer Ever" at last distills the band's meteorological whorls into a psych-pop sunburst befitting its title. One of the band's older songs (it opened The Sunniest Day Ever EP) this track illustrates a notable divergence: While Deerhunter have moved toward tightly focused songs, the most recent recordings on Scribble Mural Comic Journal venture further into nuanced atmospherics. From a certain point of view, their journey is the same.