New York-based dream-pop trio Kordan have made their full-length album debut with a deeply satisfying and exquisitely melancholy LP called The Longing. Embedded in all its complexly textured layers lies a sadness that touches on the spiritual and gives its eleven tracks incandescent life.

On this delicate and soulful electro-rock album, which follows their 2009 EP Fantasy Nation, Kordan musters the tension of early post-punk bands like Joy Division and all that dark, tangy post-punk guitar tone and renders it on album with chamber-pop intimacy.

There’s an atmospheric, shoegaze influence too, but they draw that in tightly as well. It isn’t a vast ocean of soundscapes and drifting balladry. At its heart there is tambourine-rattling rock ‘n’ roll and that holds everything together. Songs like “Mirror” and “Hologram” that come later in the album have a truly driving energy like flying through a big city late at night in a big car.

Fans of Sigur Rós and Asobi Seksu, Vivian Girls and The Raveonettes will all find something soft to sink into here. Lead singer Arthur’s voice has Jónsi’s cold, ethereal thinness and Sigur Rós is probably Kordan’s closest musical cousin.

Best of all, The Longing is a concept album! Now, wait. Calm down. Listen. It’s a story — a heartbreaking, dystopian love story set in 2036.

As they tell it:

Somewhere in a bleak, run-down Tokyo neighborhood, someone drifts through the crowds, holograms, and faded neon to reunite with a loved one he hasn’t seen in years. In this vast metropolis of millions, loneliness has become his prison. The longing he has felt for her and the memories of what could have been have become his only reality.

There’s a lot of poetry in the lyrics about holograms and reflections. These lead to more reflections on love’s many illusions and strange guises. See? Lots of layers.

Interestingly, the members of the group all met years ago in Puerto Rico’s underground music scene only to reunite later in bleak, run-down New York. Is there a story within the story? Either way, The Longing is a sad and pretty, self-contained tale of an album that you are going to want to climb inside and hanging out in for awhile.