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It was on a plane from Portland, Ore., that The Decemberists knew they had arrived.

The band had already been christened as something of an indie-rock darling, following other acts like Death Cab for Cutie in parlaying independent success into mainstream record deals. "The Crane Wife," the band's 2006 album, was being hailed as one of the year's best.

But it took Comedy Central "journalist" Stephen Colbert, host of "The Colbert Report" and one of pop culture's current arbiters of all-things-hip, to convince the band members themselves that their efforts were being noticed.

The background: Last November, the band announced the opportunity for fans to create a music video using footage of The Decemberists performing in front of a green screen. In a "Colbert Report" segment later that month, Colbert accused the band of ripping off his idea, since he had developed a similar concept earlier in the year. He urged viewers to edit him into the video for the Decemberists song "O Valencia!" The band responded by challenging Colbert to an on-screen guitar duel, which took place in late December. (Colbert faked a hand injury after playing a few notes, was replaced by stand-in guitarist Peter Frampton and was voted the winner by audience vote. His prize for winning? A copy of "The Crane Wife.")

"We announced our green-screen video concept last year, but we were unaware he had a similar thing he'd already done," Decemberists front man Colin Meloy told The Daily Times during a recent interview, feigning indignity. "It just so happened we were flying back from Portland to New York City, and [guitarist] Chris Funk was watching Comedy Central when he saw Colbert call us out. It was entirely unscripted and unannounced, ad we felt like the only way justice could be done was to challenge Colbert to a guitar duel."

Meloy chuckles at the episode, however, and on some level seems secretly pleased at the attention. After all, Colbert — with his on-screen persona as a right-wing buffoon and penchant for skewering journalists as much as he does the newsmakers themselves — is the news provider of choice for a new generation of hipsters. That Colbert is a fan (as are, one would assume, his viewers) says a lot about the appeal of The Decemberists. Given the band's unorthodox approach to rock 'n' roll — complete with theatrical flourishes, influences drawn from literature and obscure folk tales and an emphasis on story-driven lyrics — it's one of the most unusual success stories in popular music today.

Named both in reference to the Russian Decembrist Revolt and to the often melancholy and dreary weather associated with the month of December, the band released the EP "5 Songs" in 2001. From the beginning, the group has favored a storytelling approach to its songs, often drawing on historical events and images. (Colbert once described the band's music as "hyper-literate prog-rock.")

"I think from an early age, I tended to be a little on the overimaginative side of things," Meloy said. "I was into writing short stories and plays, and when I started getting interested in music, my love for narrative and storytelling led me to really get into songs and their way of telling a story.

"I read a lot, and some of the songs are drawn from books and stories, but I don't know that we're all that literate. We use narratives and characters and draw from other, bygone eras, and I think that gets us labeled as literate."

Meloy cites singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock as an early influence on his own songwriting style.

"His brand of storytelling, where he married a clear narrative with these elements that were completely of his own invention, excited me early on," Meloy said.

Originally signed to the Hush and Kill Rock Stars labels, The Decemberists released three full-length albums — "Castaways and Cutouts," "Her Majesty" and 2005's "Picaresque" — before being signed by Capitol Records. "Picaresque" captured the attention of many critics and earned the band comparisons to such indie icons as Neutral Milk Hotel; with a style that ranged from quirky, bouncy pop-rock to lush ballads, The Decemberists employed such instruments as accordion, Hammond B3 and Wurlitzer organs and upright bass to craft a sound that grew from a number of different genres, including folk, psychedelic pop and progressive rock.

With "The Crane Wife," however, Meloy said he was faced with a dilemma — more of the same, which had built The Decemberists a steady and loyal fanbase, or come out of the major-label gate swinging for the fences?

"In any situation, a band deals with something like that when they develop an image for themselves," he said. "They want to keep it consistent because that's what drove them in the first place, but they also want to challenge the audience, because the audience doesn't want to be spoon-fed the same record every year and a half. We felt that as long as we were able to stay true to our own interests and the things we were excited about, that the fans would continue to follow what we're doing. And hopefully we've been able to do that.

"The thing is, it's been a gradual thing for us. On every record and every tour, it's been a progression. We've gone to bigger places and sold more records, and it's been gradual enough for us to not make crazy, weird decisions. It's not been sudden success, but it's not been stagnant either. It feels comfortable and good."

It's also opened up the band to more criticism. For "The Crane Wife," Meloy drew on a story he discovered several years ago in the children's section of a bookstore in Portland, a Japanese folk tale about a man who falls in love with a silk-weaver and discovers that she was once a crane he had nursed back to health.

Listeners of National Public Radio voted it their favorite album of 2006, and it debuted at No. 35 on Billboard's Top 200 albums chart. It also set new standards for The Decemberists, and already Meloy has his eye on the album's follow-up.

"We're starting to build on some ideas," he said. "We haven't really landed on anything, because it's still early in the cycle and the ideas are in their gestational phase. It'll be a while before they're fleshed out. Lately, I've been discovering a lot of old folk songs, and they're providing a lot of influence and inspiration."

Wednesday, The Decemberists will bring their "Crane Wife" tour to downtown Knoxville's Tennessee Theatre. It's a challenge, Meloy said, presenting such instrumentally complex in a live setting.

"Some of the songs are easier than others, and the ones that are hard are hard in a way that's a good challenge, so it's all exciting for us," he said. "We've got a lighting designer for the first time, so fans will see a bit more of a light show, and we have new outfits and new backdrops. Oh, and we have a new whale. But don't ask about it. I can't tell you anything beyond that. It's all top-secret information."