'Bored of being bored', TV on the Radio have concocted a tub-thumping new sound that is taking the US by storm.  inger Tunde Adebimpe tells Jim Carroll that he's glad to be giving give rock 'n' roll an injection of African soul.

It's fortunate that Tunde Adebimpe is not paranoid. After the TV on the Radio singer has expanded at length about how the world would be a far safer place without George W. Bush, an ice-cream van pulls to a halt outside his window and begins to tinkle Yankee Doodle Dandy. Add the sudden crackles on the phoneline and you could excuse Adebimpe for any suspicions he might have about tapped phones or intercepted mail as a result of expressing unAmerican views.

But Adebimpe has more reasons to be cheerful than fearful at present. Thanks to a glorious début album, TV on the Radio's satisfyingly wayward and seductive mix of sounds is winning much favour. Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes is an album you won't meet every day of the week. A majestic work, it has pocketed many comparisons, from Curtis Mayfield doing doo-wop to the Pixies pounding down the road at post-rock full throttle. Few of these descriptions, however, come any way close to the truth. Live (they were one of the hits at this year's South by Southwest music jamboree in Texas) and on record, TV on the Radio are a completely new kind of music programming.

The singer believes their unique mesh of sounds come from "being bored of being bored" - the very best reason of all to make music, he feels. "We wanted to make something which would keep us confused as well as interested. It's nice to have older people coming to our shows and saying they haven't had as much fun since they were teenagers and they even feel a little bit silly about jumping up and down. But surely that's the point of leaving your house and going to a show? I don't want to go to a show and be bored, so I don't want to put anyone else through that as well."

When Adebimpe met David Sitek for the first time, they had both moved into the same apartment building in Brooklyn. The singer was then a film student, Sitek a producer working with such new-New-York rock acts as Liars and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and there was a thriving art scene developing all around them. Exchanging tapes and ideas led to impromptu improvisations in a local bar called the Stinger and proper songs, before additional band members and more songs led to record deals with first Touch & Go and then 4AD.

Such a progression and pedigree means you will never find an article on the band that doesn't make great play on TV on the Radio's art-rock precedents.

Adebimpe doesn't care either way. "We can all draw and we can play music, so if that makes it art rock, great (laughs). My first experience hearing the term came when someone was describing Sonic Youth to me and when I heard what they sounded like, they became my favourite band, so I'm not put off by the term." What does make him bristle, however, is how the band's racial make-up is treated as something of a novelty. Mentions of black-rock band Living Colour have, it seems, also become the norm. "It's as if you can't be black and be in a rock 'n' roll band," he says with a sigh. "Some journalist in Louisville, Kentucky said to us: 'You guys remind me of Living Colour, but I can't think why'. I really wanted to say to him well, four of us are black and there's other reasons why we'd remind you of Living Colour. Others say things like 'there's a big African influence to this', so I say to them 'well, there's a big African in the band'.

"It's really lazy and weird to encounter that mindset and to get asked questions like 'is it weird to be black and to play rock 'n' roll music?' I have a degree in film-making and know enough about rock 'n' roll to know that's a really dumb question to ask. Maybe they should go talk to Chuck Berry."

No wonder, then, that so much of Adebimpe's lyrical observations have to do with "how African-Americans are portrayed in mainstream media".

"I don't like to bullet-point my songs because I don't think that way or write that way, but you can always feel and hear the emotions coming through. Someone who goes to college to figure out how to be a recording artist is probably going to go down a path that is a lot different than someone who realises they will hurt themselves or someone else if they don't write a song or paint a picture."

If people are finding it hard to come to grips with TV on the Radio's musical mish-mash of reference points, Adebimpe believes the next generation will be even more oblique. At least bands such as TV on the Radio are recycling stuff we recognise, he says. "I'm keen to hear what kind of music the kids whose formative point was Kid 606 or some other experimental music from the last few years will make. It will be exciting to figure out their reference points, to see where they are coming from.

"The nice thing is that you know something is coming. It has been proven time and time again that interesting music always follows a fallow period. I mean, try to imagine the kind of stuff that was being played on popular American hit radio before rock 'n' roll came along. I think it's time to hold on to see what's ahead." For once, it seems there may be something new on the TV.

Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes is out now on 4AD