Eccentric, extravagant and enigmatic, Empire of the Sun come from a strange place. Not just any strange place, either. Theirs is a fabulous fantasy world all of their own. And, they’d be the first to agree, that makes them more than a little odd.

With their striking looks, keen eye for a style statement and contagious line in dream-pop, friends Nick Littlemore and Luke Steele straddle the line between cool and camp, beautiful and bonkers.

“It’s alchemy,” says Nick, who while sporting a thick crop of bushy hair, is the slightly more conventional-looking of the pair, lacking Luke’s eye make-up and penchant for feathery headresses.

“We just dream things up... then ever odder things happen.”

We first heard of the Aussie duo five years ago, after the release of their debut Walking on a Dream, with its chart-denting hit We are the People. A shimmering slice of synth-pop it grabbed not only because of its electro-acoustic loveliness but because it seemed to come from a parallel, ever so fabulous, universe.

Now they are back with long-awaited follow-up Ice on the Dune, and Nick admits he is in love with it.

“Our lives have changed irrecoverably since the achievement of our first album,” he tells me. “The things I’m most proud of are the songs like I’ll be Around [from the new album], which can reduce me to tears.

“Luke can sing like a child, but he can also sound like Maria Laslo. It’s joyful and I absolutely adore it.”

The album marks a coming together for the quirky double-act and the end of a lengthy period apart, including a period when Nick went mysteriously AWOL from Australia, later revealing he had been working with Cirque du Soleil in Montreal and writing and recording an album with his own electro-dance band Pnau with one Elton John.

The songs on the new album were dreamt up in isolation with Nick living in New York and Luke in Los Angeles; each collecting songs then meeting to compare notes.

“It came together 18 months ago while travelling around the world on a treasure hunt, looking for things here and there,” he says.

Does he feel the pair share a special bond, I ask? “Within any relationship there are things that will test it,” he confesses. “But when we are creating, nothing gets in the way. There’s something special that happens when we go into the studio.”

Like all the best creative partnerships, the pair met over drinks; in their case, in a bar in Sydney.

Nick wrote a tune Tell the Girls That I’m Not Hangin’ Out, for Luke’s band The Sleepy Jackson, and Luke returned the favour, guesting with Nick’s side project Teenager and singing with Pnau.

It went so well they decided to embark on a side project, settling on the name Empire of the Sun, in celebration with those ancient civilisations which worshiped the glowing orb. That also explains the vaguely Aztec/ Mayan/ Incan aesthetic.

“Luke had this crazy image, with wild hair and an old briefcase, like you might see in a Charlie Chaplin film,” says Nick of the pair’s first meeting.

“I thought ‘this guy is different; he’s way out there!’ The next day we decided to make music. Even then he had his briefcase with him, which was full of different things. It might be newspapers or the cover of The New Yorker; always something different.

“The first song we did was quite experimental but we felt the need to hear it live. “Then it hit me and I knew it would work. It’s remarkable but life has so much serendipity, I’ve come to accept it.”

Their love of the downright bizarre make them the perfect choice to headline this month’s Wilderness Festival, that free-spirited, eclectic celebration of the weird and wonderful held deep in the woods at Cornbury Park, near Charlbury. They join a bill which also features cult Detroit singer-songwriter Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, folk-pop band Noah & The Whale, Martha Wainwright, Michael Kiwanuka and Tom Odell.

Nick says he is looking forward to his visit to Oxfordshire. “I’ve got family there,” he says.

Where? I ask.

“Near Oxford; Littlemore.” he says, laughing at my confusion and waiting for the penny to drop.

I tell him I’m impressed by his knowledge of Oxford’s geography and ask if he’s familiar with the village’s most famous institution – the psychiatric hospital.

“Oh, yeah,” he deadpans. “Of course... that’s where they live!”

  • Empire of the Sun play Wilderness festival,http://www.wildernessfestival.com Cornbury Park August 8-11 Adult weekend tickets are £146.50 Visit wildernessfestival.com