Chill-out electronica gets a lot warmer with Lali Puna

Two years ago, around the time that electroclash gasped its last, shrill breath in this country, a new movement of electronica edged its way to the fore. This new beast wasn't so much a frigid, mascara-smeared robot, as electroclash undeniably was, with its brilliant Fischerspooner and ice queens Peaches and Chicks on Speed.

Instead, this music was warm, almost inviting, sort of like retreating in front of a fireplace after electroclash's chill. Best of all, it still got you on the dance floor. Suddenly, the style had all kinds of purveyors: the Notwist, the Postal Service (which scored a major dance hit with ''Such Great Heights"), mm, Dntel, and Ryksopp.

Perhaps the most underrated of this new generation has been Lali Puna, a German quartet that headlines tomorrow night's Morr Music Tour, which also includes the Go Find and Styrofoam, at T.T. the Bear's.

In the United States, however, the music has been slow to catch on. It's more of a phenomenon in Europe, where the majority of these musicians are based and thus where many of the fans are. So naturally, Lali Puna's leader, singer-keyboardist Valerie Trebeljahr, was a little nervous when she and her band first toured the United States in 2002.

''We didn't know what to expect," Trebeljahr says from her home in Munich. ''The US audience is very rock-oriented, so we didn't know how our music would be received. But it's been good for us. I think there's really an audience for this music, even if it's a small one."

Trebeljahr started Lali Puna in 1998, after her all-girl band L.B. Page dissolved without recording a single album. At first she was fine on her own, crafting songs solo on a four-track recorder at home, ''but then I realized it was kind of boring making music that no one else was hearing and talking about," she says.

Trebeljahr and her bandmates, including Markus Acher (who fronts the Notwist), Christian Heiss, and Christoph Brandner, now make music that's a buffed hybrid of electronica, indie rock, and, to a large degree, ambient pop.

So what then to call it? Some have branded it indietronica; others flatly consider it electro-pop, or merely an evolution of electronica. ''It's definitely not dance music," says Trebeljahr. ''I couldn't imagine it being played in a discotheque."

Still, Lali Puna's songs are just as much about creating an atmosphere in which one's free to think, relax, and, yes, even dance. Finally we have chill-out music for people who hate that term and what's traditionally associated with it. Electronica shadings aside, it's not listless techno that loops into oblivion, nor is it what one friend recently deemed it: electrosnooze (though Trebeljahr seemingly poked fun at such an assertion when she named Lali Puna's debut release ''Snooze").

Part of the music's inherent sleepiness comes from Trebeljahr's voice, which is seldom more potent than a whispered coo. Her lyrics, however, pack some serious heat. For example, on Lali Puna's latest album, ''Faking the Books," Trebeljahr's songs have been informed by US politics.

''Everybody in Europe has been paying attention to what's going on in the United States and with the Iraq war," she says. ''It was after 9/11 that I started writing these songs, so they're about what I was seeing and thinking about then."

Go to www.boston.com/ae/music to hear clips of Lali Puna and the Go Find.

In ''Call 1-800-Fear" she references the Bush administration's system of color-coded terrorist alerts: ''Exploitation fear/Misleading you/They spend your money on mini-nukes/So you should talk/But orange alert lets you nod your head/When you should talk," she sings.

The songs on Lali Puna's first two albums, ''Tricoder" and ''Scary World Theory," were textbook examples of electro-acoustic dynamics (strummed guitars layered over organic synth), often with few or no lyrics. But ''Faking the Books" is meatier and more adventurous, both in terms of lyrics and production. For starters, Trebeljahr has added angular guitar riffs and pummeling drums.

Trebeljahr, who is of Korean descent and lived for a time in Portugal, sings almost exclusively in English, not in German. ''It's hard to sing in German and achieve the mood we want," she says.

That mood is one of the reasons Dieter Sermeus, the one-man force behind the Go Find, is especially fond of the band. ''I'm a big fan," he says. ''We make different music than each other, but I think we have the same feeling for music. I think Lali Puna is like lying on a sofa, where you can dream away."