The Besnard Lakes are a Montreal based band that can best be described as "The Beach Boys in a cave on acid"...and even that description does not due them full justice. They are a band that truly defies what most people would consider music, while not sounding like a complete mess. Originally, they started off as a pretty run-of-the-mill shoegaze band, with their debut album Volume I. Here's the track Thomasina from that album, probably the only older track they still play live...
The Besnard Lakes really hit their stride with the release of The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night. On this album, frontman Jace Lasek showed that he had been hiding a trump card not shown on the first album...an insane, and even angelic falsetto. This, combined with the sampling of numbers stations (encoded spy radio stations), created an amazingly atmospheric album that set the bar for much of their later work. Check out For Agent 13 for an example of that falsetto!
The Besnard Lakes have continued to follow up with a couple more great albums, and continue to tour and release albums. They most recently toured with old school shoegazers Ride, and just released the album In A Complex Coliseum Museum. Seeing The Besnard Lakes live is always a treat, as they tend to overindulge in the studio, and have to resort to some clever tricks to achieve the same sounds live. As Jace Lasek has said, it's like being in a cover band of themselves...