Having done time in more go-nowhere bands than he cares to name, Olivier Libaux was determined not to blow it with Nouvelle Vague. Considering that on paper the group sounds shtickier than Dread Zeppelin, Steel Panther, and Lee Press-On and the Nails, that was a challenge. Try getting people to take you seriously when you’re a French band giving the ’60s bossa nova treatment to the new wave, punk, and postpunk classics of the ’70s and ’80s.

Reached at a New York tour stop, Libaux notes that he and band cofounder Marc Collin were determined to be taken seriously right from the start.

“In France, in say 2000 or 2001, there was a fashion where we were surrounded by people doing versions of other people’s songs, kitschy versions that were supposed to make people laugh or smile,” Libaux says, speaking with a French accent that makes him sound like a sexier version of Inspector Clouseau. “When we started Nouvelle Vague, first of all we were big fans of new wave music. Second of all, we for sure wanted to make very strange versions with our versions, not kitschy.”

That mission has been accomplished over the course of three albums. Nouvelle Vague’s eponymous debut disc in 2004 turned the band into something of a cause célí¨bre among transcontinental hipsters and caught the attention of the mainstream. Even if you think you’ve never heard of the band, chances are you caught its retro-exotic version of the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to Fuck” in the Grindhouse flick Planet Terror, or its samba-spiked take on Modern English’s “I Melt With You” in the Brangelina vehicle Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Nouvelle Vague’s third and latest disc, 3, marks a reinvention for the group, which uses a rotating cast of coquettish female singers. Having mastered the art of sounding like they grew up next to Joí£o Gilberto, Libaux and Collin mix things up sonically, with the Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere” given the mesquite country treatment and the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” playing out like a sleepy Sunday night at a Paris coffeehouse.

“It was our idea that what we were doing was sort of turning into a recipe,” Libaux notes. “We didn’t want to follow that same concept again. So we started to follow some other inspirations—like maybe let’s do this Blondie cover in reggae. ”˜Road to Nowhere’ was obvious to me how it should be done because country music is the kind of music that makes you think of a road trip and big, open country spaces.”

The ultimate brilliance of Nouvelle Vague is the way that it transforms the songs it tackles into something new, which is the mark of any great cover. The best sign that the group is onto something might be the guest stars who join Libaux, Collin, and their hired female guns on 3. Yes, that’s actually Ian McCulloch of Echo & the Bunnymen duetting with Melanie Pain on the ’60s-Brazil version of his early ’80s obscurity “All My Colours”. And yes, Martin Gore of Depeche Mode was happy to sign on for a “Master and Servant” that sounds uncannily like the Cocktail Nation circa ’94.

Proving that Nouvelle Vague is doing something right, the long list of the group’s high-profile fans doesn’t stop there. The band has been impressing punk-rock and new-wave icons right from the start.

“One time at the beginning of Nouvelle Vague, we played ”˜Guns of Brixton’ in Stockholm,” Libaux says. “Mick Jones was in the audience. A friend of his had brought him telling him ”˜Wait until you see this strange French band—you will be very surprised.’ Afterwards we saw him on Swedish TV saying that he had discovered a French band playing ”˜Guns of Brixton’ in a very unusual way and that it made him happy.”

Nouvelle Vague plays Venue next Friday (February 5).