While countless bands have attempted to combine folk and psychedelic music into a tasteful blend, without just rehashing the sounds of the 1960s, few have pulled it off as well as Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear.

Last year’s celebrated release of the band’s third studio album, “Shields,” marked a maturation in the sound of the group as a whole, transforming an indie folk outfit with poppy tendencies into one of the forerunners of the burgeoning pysch-folk genre.

From the heavy, guitar-driven opener, “Sleeping Ute,” to the haunting, emotive piano lines of the final track, “Sun in Your Eyes,” “Shields” is an original exploration of the highs and lows of the human experience.

The album marks one of the first realizations of indie psych-folk done well. It is crafted around dissonance and intricate soundscapes, painted by otherworldly guitar tones and filtered through heavy reverb and arpeggiated synths.

Grizzly Bear is touring extensively worldwide. On April 8, the band made an appearance in Austin, playing a sold out show at Stubb’s to enthusiastic fans.

Grizzly Bear started their set with a definitively tripped out tracks from “Shields,” “Speak in Rounds.” The band played their hit, “Two Weeks,” from 2009’s “Veckatimest,” in the middle of the 19-song performance, to the delight of the crowd.

Material from “Shields” composed a good portion of the show. However, Grizzly Bear finished the set with three encores, all taken from previous albums: the beach rock ballad, “Knife,” from the band’s 2006 sophomore release, “Yellow House,” the mandolin-heavy track “On a Neck, On a Spit,” from the same album, and a breathtaking acoustic performance of the ethereal, “All We Ask,” from 2009’s “Veckatimest.”

In a word, the show was incredible. The technical prowess and explosive energy of Grizzly Bear is unmatched by any other indie psych-folk band on the scene, and watching all of the masterful members of the band work together live to recreate the tension and emotion present throughout their albums was an unmatched pleasure. Through an unbelievably tight live show and a masterpiece of an album, Grizzly Bear is earning indie psych-folk some much-needed respect.

Indie folk has been going strong for years, defined most impressively by artists like Seattle’s Fleet Foxes, and has gained plenty of respect for itself as a genre along the way.

Indie psychedelia has recently garnered much attention and praise with last year’s release of Tame Impala’s album, “Lonerism.” Indie psych-folk, however, has, for as long as it has been a genre, been relegated by critics as dirty hippiedom.

Grizzly Bear is doing the job of scrubbing the genre clean of its bad reputation by showing the world what a serious indie psych-folk band looks like.