The band mates in Of Monsters and Men have been together for only six years, but in that time they have emerged as one of the hottest bands on the indie folk-rock scene.

The Icelandic band performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2013, and their addition to the 2016 lineup for Coachella attests to their continued appeal. Here’s a look at the band, which plays two sold-out shows at The Republic on Sunday and Monday.

History

Singer Nanna Bryndis Hilmarsdottir is a former solo act who originally went by the name of Songbird. She formed a musical partnership in high school in 2010 with guitarist Brynjar Leifsson, a classmate at the time. They added fellow singer Ragnar Porallsson and then formed a quartet with drummer Arnar Rosenkranz Hilmarsson in time for an annual battle of the bands in Iceland called Musiktilraunir that same year. (They won.)

Porallsson came up with the name, and it stuck.

Two other band members joined in recent years: bass player Kristjan Pall Kristjansson and keyboardist Arni Guojonsson. Guojonsson has now departed the band to become a composer.

The band, with its strong group ethic, often draws comparison to Arcade Fire and Mumford & Sons. As with Mumford & Sons, folk music provides a deep base for the band’s sound.

In 2013 Of Monsters and Men made its debut on “Saturday Night Live!” The band has been invited to play at several international music festivals, including Glastonbury and Lollapalooza, and has been featured by the likes of Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and Interview Magazine.

Musical sound

Their first, folk-oriented, full-length album “My Head Is an Animal,” released in 2012 in the U.S., spawned the international hit “Little Talks” and was named Top Rock Album at the Billboard Music Awards in 2013. The song “Silhouettes” was added to “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” soundtrack; another song, “Sinking Man,” is on “The Walking Dead: AMC Original Soundtrack, Vol. 1.”

A solid follow-up album, “Beneath the Skin” (2015) includes the single “Crystals.” Reviews label the most recent release as darker than the band’s first — more personal and introspective.

“I’ve always been very interested in (personal) lyrics, and before the band, that was the kind of lyrics I would write,” Hilmarsdottir told the musical blog AMBY in November. “I think for this one we were just like, let’s not try to figure it out, let’s just be very honest and say what we want to say. It was also a good chance for us to go to that place and be very open.”

Mythology

The band’s melodic music incorporates local folk tales told in Iceland, with references to ethereal and mythical creatures.

“I have a few stories that I always get really inspired by, and they are ghost stories,” said Hilmarsdottir to AMBY.

“We found we could bond better by telling each other fairy tales than writing about real life,” Porallsson told The Guardian in 2012. “I couldn’t say, ‘Hey, Nanna, come and write a love song about my girlfriend.’ It just wouldn’t work.”

Vibe

The band chooses to sing their songs in English rather than in the members’ native Icelandic.

English has “a lot of sharp corners,” Porallsson told The Guardian. “Icelandic is a very wroooooagh language — lots of errrrrresssooo and brooooguuuh! That’s why it’s so good for metal. But English works better for us.”

While the music is folk-influenced, it has a rock vibe designed to reach a rowdy audience.

In concert “we were really quiet,” Hilmarsdottir elaborated, “and people would talk louder than the music at our shows. We’d get so frustrated.”

The singer said the band “would fight back” by adding layers of sound — i.e., a xylophone and more drums — to the music to compete with the crowd.

On success

“You make a record so you can hold it in your hands and say, ‘I did that,’” said Hilmarsdottir in the Guardian interview. “You don’t expect that thousands of people will go out and buy it.”