Khruangbin’s surreal year began on a boat with a bunch of jam bands and began to wrap up a few weeks ago in the desert with the legendary Wu-Tang Clan.

“It’s been surreal, dude,” says Mark Speer, the group’s guitarist. “Very surreal. I mean, we’re this band with a weird name, playing mainly instrumental music with a weird stage presence. I never anticipated any of this stuff could happen. I’m thankful. Blessed. But I’m confused as to why?”

On paper, the success of Khruangbin — whose name is a riff on the Thai word for airplane — doesn’t compute. As Speer states, the Houston trio plays mostly instrumental music — a moody and sometimes ethereal sound that envelopes a listener willing to actually listen. Speer and bassist Laura Lee often take the stage in black wigs with austere bangs; sort of a Prince Caspian with a mullet look. Behind the drum kit is Donald “DJ” Johnson, a hip-hop producer who sets the tone for their subtly unfolding songs by creating a relaxed pocket for the songs.

The band last year released “Con Todo el Mundo,” its second album, and this year the record took hold. Sold out dates in the States and as far away as Australia followed. Khruangbin became the center of a peculiar musical Venn diagram, drawing fans of various permutations of rock ‘n roll, international styles and hip-hop. And they were taken under the wing of perma-jam band Phish, which brought an entirely new crowd to the shows.

Khruangbin When: 7 p.m. Saturday Where: White Oak Music Hall, 2915 N. Main Tickets: $29.50; 713-237-0370, reventionmusiccenter.com

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Khruangbin has one show left this year — a large-scale homecoming in Houston on Saturday — before it returns to complete its third album, which could position the band for an even bigger 2020.

Because its members never saw this degree of success coming, they appear content to not meddle with their approach.

“I wonder what is about this group that people are connecting to?” Speer says. “Should I continue to try to figure it out? Or just keep doing whatever the hell I want to do?”

“I think we just want to make ourselves happy,” Lee says. “If it makes other people happy, that’s the main thing.”

Tighten up

Sitting in the Treehouse studio of Grammy-winning engineer and producer Steve Christensen, the members of Khruangbin are almost unrecognizable. Well, not Johnson. His mood and manner are like his drumming: Laid back and unflappable. But I’m struck at how much larger Speer looks without an oversize black wig, and how much smaller Lee appears without the same imposing hairpiece.

The band’s stage presence was designed to provide an interesting visual counterpart to a sound that doesn’t grab listeners by the lapel for a good shake. Instead Khruangbin’s music feels like a whispered password. All are welcome. But don’t ruin the vibe.

Speer describes a visit to a record store in Montreal while Khruangbin was on tour. Digging through the stacks of jazz LPs he came across one by the Lightmen, a progressive and spiritual jazz ensemble from the 1970s led by the great Houston drummer Bubbha Thomas.

So nearly 2,000 miles from Houston — and in another country — Speer bought a quintessentially Houston recording.

“It felt a little weird,” he says. “But I knew I had to have it.”

Speer and Johnson met playing music in church. Both had passed through the Summer Jazz Workshop, learning under Thomas and famed Kashmere High School band leader Conrad Johnson.

“There’s such a pride Houstonians have for artists that come out of this city,” Johnson says. For years his church organist was Robert Sanders, who played organ on Archie Bell and the Drells’ “Tighten Up.”

“I get my entire organ style from watching him play in church,” Johnson says. “There’s a lot of pride that comes with Houston and its music history. And I hope Houston feels that for us. I hope people hear Khruangbin and think, ‘That’s us.’”

The band’s roots are certainly deep in Houston. Johnson works as half of the hip-hop production team Beanz and Kornbread. He and Speer met Lee at Rudyard’s nearly a decade ago, and Khruangbin began to take shape. From go, the band developed its own poly-cultural language that reflects travels, obscure music found in record crates and on international music websites and also Houston’s diverse demographic makeup.

They released “The Universe Smiles Upon You” in 2015. That record created a mood from the first note. Though their shows and recordings are different experiences, both reward those attuned to the breezy shifts in tone and mood.

Back to the barn

The three members of Khruangbin are unafraid to lean into silence and ambient sound. When they write and record they do so in an old barn in Burton, outside of Brenham. To hear the members of the band discuss it, the space is the place for Khruangbin.

Initially, the barn offered logistical benefits. Rehearsal rooms abound in Houston, but, Speer points out, “You can be next to a loud band and get into a loudness match. How loud can you be?”

The barn, he says, “allowed us to be as quiet as we wanted to be. To explore that side of it.”

Other logistical issues arise from time to time. Lee describes arriving once to find a “terrifying” Death Star-looking bee hive that required removal. During one wintry session the band members found themselves in a complicated cycle: They’d run large space heaters to warm up their hands enough to play, and then turn the heaters off so they didn’t whir onto the recording. But their instruments would slip out of tune, and they’d get maybe one take of a song before having to heat up again.

“You’re beholden to the elements,” Christensen says. “But that gives it a certain vibe.”

Lee says “Como Te Quiero,” a song on “Con Todo El Mundo,” illustrates how the band uses the space.

“We always use the best take of a song,” she says. “That song, I think the best take was in the rain. And that’s the take. You work around things out there. Nothing is 100 per cent in your control. You can only do so much, the rest is something else. I think something interesting comes with that.

“There’s a sacred serenity of being out at the barn that creates the Khruangbin formula. That will always be there.”

Coming back to Houston

The third Khruangbin record is nearing completion. The band’s tour schedule allowed for recording sessions in May. So the trio and Christensen decamped to the barn to record the basic tracks.

“The songs are taking shape,” Christensen says. “It feels like a beeline toward the finish line, and we can see it in the distance. But it’s still a marathon. We’re hot. We’re sweaty. Our legs hurt.”

Lee adds, “But we’re going to do it.”

The record should be released in spring or summer of next year.

Christensen describes it as, “a new world for KB.”

Lee has been writing more vocal parts than has been heard on the previous two albums.

With each record they try to stir something new into the Khruangbin sound without committing to any single international groove. Nevertheless, each record enters the world with a bit of rock crit shorthand for its sound: Thai funk was the puzzling talking point for the first record; a Middle Eastern vibe, the second.

The band members’ responses to these descriptors ranges from bemusement to irritation. Such indicators have some value in that they can quickly convey a certain globally exotic vibe. But they can also be reductionist as they suggest a stylistic agnosticism. A commitment only to pastiche.

Admittedly, a shorthand for Khruangbin’s tonal vibe is more difficult to ascribe to music that moves with such gentle fluidity. There are elements that suggest far-flung places from around the world. But Johnson’s drums — he plays with great restraint and always finds a fascinating way to state the beat — remind that this is a band with roots in a church in Houston, a city with a global population.

“Hopefully when all is said and done,” Johnson says, “I hope people think we sound like Houston.”

Speer adds, “I think we sound like Houston.”

So after its big year of sold out concerts, high profile collaborations and a brisk scramble around the world to meet rising demand, Khruangbin will bring things home at home. Lee has seen messages from fans who are coming in from Atlanta and Argentina for this final show of 2019.

“Now I hope the Houston people come to the Houston show,” she says. “We want to make a statement that we’re from here, and proud to be from here. And we want to put on our best show in our hometown.”

For a curated Khruangbin playlist called "Best of Khruangbin," go here .

andrew.dansby@chron.com

Twitter.com/andrewdansby