It’s a rare debut album that can simultaneously capture the mundanity of contemporary life and expound upon matters metaphysical in nature, but Sunflower Bean’s Human Ceremony strives to do each of those things in equal measure.

For an example of the former, check out “I Was Home”, on which guitarist Nick Kivlen and bassist Julia Cumming, who share lead-vocal duties, trade off lines like “What did you do today?/Didn’t do much today/I was home and then I wasn’t.” Elsewhere on the album, “Creation Myth” probes the origins of all things.

Reached at a Minneapolis tour stop, Cumming is reticent to reveal who wrote what, preferring to have Sunflower Bean’s work stand as a collective effort by her, Kivlen, and drummer Jacob Faber.

“There are definitely differences between me and Nick lyrically, but I think we have to kind of trust each other in what the song is and in what the art is and stand behind it as a group,” the singer-bassist says. “And that’s what’s so fun about a group instead of just one person: you get all of the identities and all of the flavours.

“I think the combination of the metaphysical and the cosmic mixed in with the down-to-earth really is kind of about being us, and being late teenagers and dealing with existentialism and dealing with growing up and coming of age. So I think that that’s what ties us together.”

Cumming is 20 and Kivlen and Faber are 21; much of Human Ceremony was written when they were all still in their teens. In spite of their youth, however, they arguably have the musical tastes of people twice their age. The members of Sunflower Bean have cited everyone from the Beach Boys to Black Sabbath as inspirations, and the trio recently released a covers EP featuring its versions of songs by the likes of the Modern Lovers and T. Rex.

Because of its far-reaching influences, the band’s sound is hard to sum up in a sentence or two. When Cumming’s dreamy vocals come in over the chiming jangle of “Human Ceremony”, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were hearing a lost Sundays B-side. Then again, “Wall Watcher” is powered by a fuzz-blitzed guitar riff that suggests there are more than a couple of doom-metal LPs in Kivlen’s record collection.

Given that the band has inspired headlines like “How Sunflower Bean Reclaimed Classic Rock and Made It Cool Again” (courtesy of Noisey), Cumming is understandably wary of being perceived as a nostalgia act.

“When you’re a rock-music fan, there’s a whole treasure trove of history to delve into, which is potentially even not that good,” she admits. “We’re making rock music in 2016, and you want to be inspired by the other people who are making rock music in 2016 too.

“So I feel like it can be a little dangerous to just stay stuck in the past, but all of our parents are really into music themselves, and passed that love on to us and gave us a few places to start. And then you kind of go from there.”

Where Sunflower Bean does go from here is anyone’s guess. Cumming says the trio is already writing songs for its next album, and while she says she expects its sound to evolve, she declines to speculate on what exactly that will mean.

“It may be too soon to say, and I don’t want to spoil it,” she says. “But one thing I will say about everything we’ve put out, and everything we will continue to put out, is that despite us having a lot of different influences and covering a lot of different vibes on Human Ceremony, I think that there is a Sunflower Bean sound and identity that runs through that.

“And I know that the next record will have that, but each year is different. Being 19 is a lot different than being 20, you know. And I think that will be a big part of it too—looking inside of ourselves even deeper and touching upon those things a little bit.”

Sunflower Bean plays the Fox Cabaret on Friday (October 28).