LORD Huron is not a lord at all, or not of the hereditary type anyway.

Instead it is the moniker of Ben Schneider, a Michigan songwriter with a penchant for "weird fiction", who moved to Los Angeles and set up Lord Huron as a musical and visual solo project, releasing his debut album, Lonesome Dreams, in 2012.

He has since grafted various accomplices into the project, namely Mark Berry on percussion and vocals, Miguel Briseno on bass and percussion and Tom Renaud on guitar and vocals, and together they have recorded the second Lord Huron instalment, Strange Trails.

"We've evolved over time," says Schneider. "The first thing I did was the EPs completely on my own and then for the first album I had a couple of guys playing on the record and at shows and now we've developed into being a core of four guys, all friends of mine from childhood."

Schneider and co now follow up Strange Trails' April issue on the Play It Again Sam label by playing four British and Irish dates, among them Leeds Brudenell Social Club tonight, as well as London last night, Glasgow tomorrow and Dublin on Saturday.

Lord Huron, as it turns out, is a composite name. "Huron is a Great Lake in Michigan, the fifth largest in the world, and I spent a lot of my childhood there, imagining that I was the ruler of the world," says Schneider. The lord of all he saw, as it were.

There was another reason for the 'Lord' part, however. "I would listen to records from that time by artists who used to call themselves 'Lord' or 'King' or 'Duke' and I really liked that."

Tonight's focus will be on promoting Strange Trails, an album written and produced by Schneider and recorded at his band’s own Whispering Pines studio in Los Angeles. He describes the new record as "an anthology of weird fiction", a new collection of tales from the world introduced on Lonesome Dreams. “There's no direct narrative connection between the two albums; the stories here are separated by time, location and characters, but many of the themes have carried over and evolved,” he says.

Part of the songs' evolution, however, is the listener's individual response. "I try to leave room for people to interpret each song as they will and find a personal meaning for themselves, though they definitely have a meaning for me already," he says.

Schneider also has given over his songs for interpretation by his sister and her boyfriend in comic book that can be bought at Lord Huron shows and at a few record shops where they will be sold in tandem with the album.

At present, too, Lord Huron make traditional pop promo videos but Schneider has plans for expansion. "We're looking at doing some longer forms of narratives too," he says. "We've got as far as scripts, and not being on a major label, we're free to do what we do, which I won't give up on."

Such individuality also means that Schneider has favoured making an album with 14 tracks, where others might have favoured a more compact record. "I felt it was important that it was a longer record, but I'm biased," he says. "People did suggest cutting it down but I believed people would be rewarded by listening to a long album. Besides, my favourite records are the longer ones. Radiohead's records come to mind."

Lord Huron play Leeds Brudenell Social Club tonight.