New to Blender: The Hives

Despite their immaculate black-and-white shirt-tie-and-shoes ensemble, Swedish garage-rockers the Hives have a disconcerting habit of stripping in front of strangers. “We’re from a sauna culture,” shrugs guitarist Nicholaus Arson in a London dressing room. “To us, being naked is no big deal.”

Right now, though, everything about the Hives is a big deal. With the Strokes and the White Stripes striking a (power) chord with a public hungry for 1978-style pop primitivism, the time seems right for the Hives’ Ramonesy riff-o-rama and Kraftwerkian couture. Their debut, Veni Vidi Vicious, an infectious, spirited pileup of ’60s stomp and nouveau-punk shouting, is released in the U.S. this spring.

Resembling bouncers squeezed into bank-managers’ suits, bassist Matt Destruction, 24, hefty guitarist Vigilante Carlstroem, 24, and hoodlum drummer Chris Dangerous, 24, make up the band’s three parts muscle to Arson, 25, and handsome singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist’s two parts glamour.

“We’re a boy band,” suggests Almqvist, 22, with an impish grin. He claims the Hives were assembled as teens by a Randy Fitzsimmons in the tiny Swedish industrial town of Fagersta. “Some bands could use being a bit more manufactured, don’t you think?”

The group first got noticed when its grimy single “Main Offender” soundtracked a racy movie ad featuring Australian pop queen Kylie Minogue bumping and grinding in see-through lingerie.

The undergarment company yanked the ad, but the band’s follow-up, “Hate to Say I Told You So,” quickly scaled the British charts. Just don’t mention Ms. Minogue to Almqvist.

“We’re so over that,” he yawns.

Instead, the Hives prefer to direct their energies into a violently explosive live show, during which the band punches, jumps and spits behind a scissor-kicking Almqvist.

“We set out to be our own favorite band,” he says. “Now we’re everybody else’s favorite band as well. Right?”