The description Kulu Kulu Garden guitarist Ryotaro Aoki provides for his Tokyo-based indie band couldn’t be more to the point: “Basically we’re a three-piece and there’s a girl standing in the middle with a bass guitar screaming her head off,” he says, on the line from Japan’s skyscraper-filled capital.

Aoki and his bandmates, along with four other Tokyo acts, are about to board a plane to Vancouver, where the New Music from Tokyo!!! Canadian tour kicks off on Saturday. It’s the first time the Tennessee-raised rocker, who spent his formative years in the U.S. while his father completed a work contract, has ventured above the 49th parallel in North America, and it seems that the upcoming adventure has his mind racing.

“We’re all shaking in terror,” he says without even the slightest hint of jest. “We don’t know if there’s going to be five people or 300 people at the show—it’s terrifying.”

For those who’ve never experienced the buzzing matrix that is Tokyo, the showcase at the Biltmore will offer a glimpse of a music scene in full swing. The Japanese indie landscape is definitely out-there, and not just because you need a high-end GPS to locate the live houses (the name given to clubs in Japan where bands perform) hidden in the nondescript high-rises that dominate the city.

“Hopefully, people will have a chance to see what a show in Tokyo is like without having to come all the way over here,” Aoki says. “At one point, there was talk about food being served during the show, which sometimes happens over here. People bring miso-pork soup or other sorts of food you would find at a Japanese rock festival or a carnival.”

While the idea of teriyaki-chicken kebabs might not fly with the Vancouver health department, you can count on Kulu Kulu Garden rattling eardrums with its overamped Sonic Youth–inspired art rock. Audience members will also get the rundown on Detorake Yuuenchi, the debut EP from the trio. The release finds Aoki and his bandmates barrelling through spastic tunes like “Merry-Go-Round”, a clanging, punk-fuelled charger that devolves into a no-wave shred-fest, complete with headache-inducing feedback.

“Hopefully, the sound will envelop people and make them want to dance,” the guitarist says.

Kulu Kulu Garden may draw inspiration from notable Japanese noise-rock exports Melt-Banana and Boredoms, but it doesn’t dive into the experimental canon as deep as those heavyweights. For instance, singer-bassist Kotone Miyahara has no qualms about tossing aside her typically atonal vocal style to go the dreamy-indie-lullaby route with “Mori No Kumasan”.

“I think the tour is a good opportunity to show people that we’re not just a bunch of noise-rock bands or experimental bands,” Aoki says. “There’s more going on in indie music in Tokyo. There’s this huge younger generation of musicians who are up-and-coming. They are the YouTube generation who listen to all sorts of music and don’t care if it’s indie or mainstream or whatever, they just listen to whatever they like and put it together in their own interesting ways.”

Kulu Kulu Garden plays the Biltmore Cabaret on Saturday (May 22).