SALTY TALE Assbring took her stage name from an inspirational pup befriended on a Spanish vacation.

Photo: Johanna Hedborg

Swedes are supposed to be depressive and even a little morbid—other than Abba, of course. So give El Perro del Mar credit for bucking cultural stereotypes. The band, as such, is the nom de rock for singer-songwriter Sarah Assbring, who dons gossamer wings for her sophomore album, From the Valley to the Stars (Control Group). If listeners get caught up by the ethereal mood, the effect is entirely deliberate.

“I had a clear idea about it,” Assbring says, chatting from home in Gothenburg, Sweden, which has developed a reputation for its homegrown musical talents—from Ace of Base to melodic death-metal acts like Dark Tranquillity to a popular wave of pensive songwriters like Jens Lekman and José González. “I was more consciously trying to make an even more timeless-sounding piece, like a place in the world where you couldn’t put your finger on whether it was modern or whether it was old. I wanted to place the music just above the clouds, somewhere in heaven.”

Tracks such as “Jubilee” make that intoxicatingly explicit. Churchy, minimalist keyboards and multitracked harmonies evoke classic Beach Boys, as Assbring coos a simple phrase (“Jubilee…jubilation”) buffeted by wordless oohs and ahhs, her soft voice aloft on what could be a cushion of marshmallows. Brian Wilson once described “Good Vibrations” as a “teenaged symphony to God.” It only takes a bit of mild poking to learn that, in her own way, Assbring shared that desire to offer up something to the infinite.

“For me, it was the death of a person who had been very close to me for all my life,” she says, without disclosing particulars. “It made me think for the first time what death is and what life is. It led me to existential-type questions. At this time in my life, I was very open to getting myself into these questions. But I wanted a way to be light-hearted and hopeful and not religious about it.”

Assbring, who visits Schubas Monday 12 on a triple bill with countrywomen Lykke Li and Anna Ternheim, kept the elements simple. A piano, an old Hammond organ and a string machine account for much of Stars’ sonic palette, and Assbring gets medieval, in the mellowest possible way, by adding the airy traces of a recorder. The rudimentary melodies and one-woman choral approach to the arrangements lend much of the new material a hymnlike feel. Taking the songs on the road offers a challenge, but she will have a full band to flesh out the textures so painstakingly evolved in the studio.

More than a year has passed since Assbring’s last American tour, and she’s eager to escape the modest charms of her hometown—even if Gothenburg’s budding scene has drawn attention away from Stockholm. “It’s been a very fruitful and creative place to be the past few years, very buzzing and creative,” she says. “But I wouldn’t romanticize the city or give license for someone to come here. The myth has been going around for some time. If someone told me they were going to move here I’d say, ‘Why? Don’t do it! Stay where you are!’ ”

But Gothenburg has its paradoxical value: “It’s not a big city, so you have a reason to go somewhere else,” Assbring says, laughing. “But every time I get back, there is something here that I can’t put my finger on that I have missed in my soul.”

America, of course, offers abundant distractions. Yet one thing it likely doesn’t offer is an actual vacation. Assbring says she’s dying to slip away for a day when her tour bus rolls through New Mexico. “I have this obsession with Georgia O’Keeffe,” she says, expressing a desire to visit the Santa Fe museum devoted to the painter. “I’m thinking maybe I should prolong my stay and head out to where she lived. Maybe I can find someone who will be nice enough to drive me there.” No worries: She’s delivered the sort of intense, stunning album that evokes devotion in its listeners. Some tear-streaked fan surely will drive her through the desert, if not to the ends of the earth, on her romantic quest.

El Perro del Mar plays Schubas Monday 12.