You know how the soundtrack to Where the Wild Things Are doesn’t really sound like your typical Yeah Yeah Yeahs/Karen O stuff? That would be thanks to Imaad Wasif, who was called in by the brittle rock band to add “acoustic textures” after they caught a few bars of his layered, haunting self-titled debut. (Free download of a heart-rending track here.)

Wasif grew up in Palm Springs, California, transplanted by two Indian parents who had eloped. They were both artists, natch and in the boat from London, their classical Indian records got drenched. The covers were illegible–but the records played well. Wasif explained to the LA Record that that’s why they have no labels:

I have a box of records he gave me—all East Indian classical music I was hearing when I was growing up. When they left London, they took a ship and the records were ruined. They were waterlogged, and I guess the chest showed up and all the covers were ruined. I kind of pieced them together stylistically—I think I know who’s who.

In the desert of Palm Springs, he grew up listening to those and all the pop tunes that would warble in faintly over an old Sears radio. It’s those aesthetics that Wasif has since sought to combine–classical trills, pop weighed down by static, and the psych-folk inherent in a hippie-dippie desert upbringing.

According to the interview, Wasif listens to those waterlogged records daily, just as he plays music daily–”On a day where I don’t sing, I feel suffocated,” he said. In 2001, he moved to Los Angeles and has since played with the bands lowercase, Alaska, has been backed by his own concoction–Two Part Beast, and has played guitar with Folk Implosion as well as recorded with the legendary Lou Barlow. In the studio for the Where the Wild Things Are record, he befriended the guys who’d go on to become Dead Weather and is currently touring with them. Next week, his new solo album drops on October 13th, and according to early reviews it’s startlingly brilliant.

Hear him breathe at his MySpace page or on this new video, via Stereogum. Check out his video for “Oceanic,” where he’s backed by Two Part Beast.

Or a fan video for “Already Gone”:

Here is a fan-video for “All is Love,” the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack single: