And so, the rock world turns its lonely eyes to Franz Ferdinand. Can their swaggering, arty funk crossed with Merseybeat jangle yield an actual British, or Scottish, invasion?

Who knows? It's Franz's country- and labelmates, Sons and Daughters, who have released one of this year's best albums.

The Repulsion Box (Domino) rides a relentless punkabilly groove, chronicling love and life gone awry with sinister literary detail. And, in singer-guitarist Adele Bethel, Sons and Daughters has a vocal force truly to be reckoned with.

The music of Sons and Daughters is filled with savagely precise rhythms. And Bethel stands to be counted alongside every clipped drum fill, every clanging guitar riff. Unabashedly Scottish, her voice does not soothe or caress. A hard brogue sharpens every syllable, rendering the already-brutal lyrics even more devastating.

Bethel breathlessly opens the album with these words: "Hit me, hit me, hit me, I'm already on the ground/ You're asleep in the next room and I'm banging to be found." She imbues The Repulsion Box's most cryptic lines — like "The sweat pours in like an ancient grin and laughs like a suffering one" — with a force that makes their meaning known. Her simplest statements can shake the ground, be they a defiant "I am innocent" or the dare, "You're burying my good name/ Keep burying my name."

Even on songs where Bethel ostensibly takes a background role, your ears cannot help but seek her out. On "Rama Lama," a showcase for co-singer-guitarist Scott Paterson (who possesses a fine, laconic baritone), it's her background part in the chorus — the increasingly frenzied yelps of "Shake, shake, shake, shake!" — that gives the song its soul-shivering edge.

And yet, talking over the phone while traveling during a U.S. tour opening for The Decemberists, Bethel simply theorizes that The Repulsion Box's intensity "grew from playing so many shows last year."

Before forming Sons and Daughters, Bethel and drummer David Gow were members of Scottish indie eccentrics Arab Strap. Her time in that band inspired her to stay true to her roots. "I think singing with Arab Strap gave me the confidence to sing in my own accent. I made the decision not to change that when we started this band. It was just the most honest way we could do it, really."

After leaving Arab Strap, Bethel and Gow began playing with her longtime friend Aildh Lennon on bass. "We started by writing songs together, maybe about four years ago, just in our flat. I met Scott when I was working at a record store in Glasgow. He'd come in and buy a lot of records that I liked." Soon Paterson was in the band too, and they were mining their collective interest in American music, from Robert Johnson to Harry Smith's Anthology of Folk Music to Bob Dylan to The Cramps.

Their first release, last year's Love the Cup (labeled an EP, although The Repulsion Box is only six minutes longer) showed but tentative promise, although the four had been together for three years by that point. "I guess we'd consider ourselves a slow-working band," Bethel laughs, noting that it took them a year just to book those all-important London gigs.

They made The Repulsion Box in Cologne, using the same studio in which Brian Eno and Kraftwerk recorded seminal works in the '70s. Working with former Nick Cave producer Victor Van Vugt, they set out "to make the most live-sounding record that we could," Bethel says. "I suppose there is a plastic element to setting up in a studio. It's not the same as having people in front of us. But we tried to do the best we could. It was pretty stripped back and we all played at the same time. We didn't put many overdubs on the record."

Rather than head home after the Decemberists tour, the band opted to open for Franz Ferdinand in Philly and Boston. Although they only occasionally partake in dancey, Ferdinand-like touches such as those swishing cymbals (most prominently on a song called — what else? — "Dance Me In"), Bethel sees a definite link not only between the two bands, but uniting the current Glasgow scene as a whole. "Glasgow was lying dormant at the time [when Sons and Daughters started]; it had just come out of this amazing post-rock scene. And then that died down and there wasn't really very much going on. I think there's a need [now] for shorter pop songs and perhaps even a bit of showmanship."

Sons and Daughters play Fri., Oct. 14, 8 p.m., $15-$35, with Franz Ferdinand and Cut Copy, Tower Theatre, 69th and Ludlow sts., Upper Darby, 610-352-2887. This column has a blog. Well, they have each other, really. Go to: undertherock.blogspot.com.