Beach House doesn’t seem to know how good they are.

The Baltimore band, which opened for Grizzly Bear last night at the Norva, is Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally. They are, as they say, on the verge. In 2006 their self-titled debut album was in Pitchfork’s top 20; their follow-up, Devotion, was a masterpiece, crafting a fully identifiable sound and building them a loyal fanbase; and their much-anticipated third album will be released early next year by Sub Pop.

As anyone who knows of them or saw their show last night can attest, Beach House has a beautiful dream-pop sound, very lush and intimate and textured. Theirs is a sound that nearly any lover of slow pop, indie, folk or even old jazz would rave about. It calls for a hot chocolate, a long kiss, a dance. In particular Legrand’s voice is deep and haunting, a little like Billie Holiday’s on “Strange Fruit”–you can’t tell at times if it’s a man or woman singing, but it sounds gorgeous nonetheless.

Yet Legrand, in our interview, humbly downplays the recognition. “I guess it’s hard for me to believe that we have an influence in any way,” she says, “because we’re not a huge band. It would be very flattering if that was the case, but I guess I’m just not ready to believe that we’re at that level yet. We’re still just plugging away, riding around in the 12-passenger, eating beef jerky, opening for other bands.”

She’s down-to-earth, giving props as much to Beyonce and the Beach Boys as she does to Flaming Lips and Velvet Underground (who she says, “in a weird way is also pop”). In person, she’s sweet and open and fully engaged with fans, stopping to hug a guy who spontaneously exclaimed as she walked by, “You’re amazing!”) Here’s an excerpt from our conversation a couple hours before the show.

AltDaily: What do you think your music portrays?

Victoria Legrand: Our music is very imaginative, I feel; very visual, very cinematic. It’s emotional. The first record has a lot of ambient qualities to it. It’s ephemeral, but it’s also very intense and dark. I don’t think of it as fragile, but maybe distant-seeming.

So what kind of a place do you have to go to to make your music? What is your creative process?

At this point, our entire lives, what we do, everything we experience makes its way into our music. It’s a constant state. Everything is inspiring. But you can’t really write on the road. What you can do is get snippets of ideas and visions. The good thing about touring though, even though you’re exhausted, is it makes you stronger. It makes you realize what you want to be doing. When you get home and you’re in the studio, you cultivate it, you sculpt it all.

I’ve loved your song “Gila” and put it on every mixtape I’ve made since I first heard it. Can you talk about the creation and evolution of that song?

“Gila” was pieced together over a long period of time. I hate to be too grossly scientific about it or tear apart the magic, but that song took a while, and it was while we were touring. The chorus, the “i-i-i-la-a-a,” that moment took a while to become apparent. But when it was apparent, it was like naming something–all of a sudden it has a name… It exists.

So when you start writing, do you already have a song in your head that you’re trying to get out?

There’s always a song, there’s always a chord progression, there’s always a melody. But by working on it, you examine deeply the thing that came out very naturally, which is the expression of the song. Then there’s a lot of math to music, too. Alex is more of the arranger, the scientific mind, and I’ve got kind of more of the conceptual, emotional, melodic thing going on. And the two of us together, we have an unspoken language, making something come to fruition. But it always starts as a song.

Your music has a sincerity to it that I think is making a comeback in music.

Well, I feel that it’s more ok for everyone to just do whatever they want. And be weird if they want to, or play something by themselves if they want to, or get together and form some kind of supergroup. So in that sense, the vibe is definitely that music is more something from somebody and not just some plastic thing. For Beach House, we’re definitely more into music that you get an immediate feeling from; the pop songs that have substance to it. I’m not trying to pretend that I think there’s a certain way that things have to be done–I don’t feel that way. I just think that any way that music makes you feel–whether it makes you dance and jiggle your butt or whatever–it doesn’t really matter. It’s just all expression. It’s all good in some way, do you know what I mean?

Yeah. Definitely.

I think the reason Alex and I do what we do, and the reason for me to completely pursue music as the thing that I would do for the rest of my life is because of the ultimate freedom you have in it as an art form. You can literally make whatever you want to make, and then it exists, and then it can mean 50 different things to maybe hundreds of people in completely different ways. That’s amazing, I think.

Check out more of Beach House’s music at beachhousemusic.net or myspace.com/beachhousemusic.