For the past two years, the San Francisco band Sic Alps has been periodically releasing EP’s and singles. Now they have conveniently presented all these tracks together in an excellent compilation, “A Long Way Around a Shortcut.” The band is a noisy combination of the modern indie rock sound and 1960’s psychedelic rock.

For music fans with some tolerance for dissonance and experimentation, Sic Alps is a great band to check out. Their new disc consists of over two dozen short songs, with the newest material placed earliest. The new song, “Description of the Harbor (Strapping Field Hands)” begins as a ramshackle piano ballad and then slowly descends into noise: creaks, groans and howls. Similar interludes of pure noise punctuate, but don’t dominate, the album.

Instead, the Sic Alps deliver mostly woozy, old-fashioned garage rock songs that manage to straddle the line between classic pop structures and complete chaos. “Dr. Bag and the Pomade Nature Giants” is driven by a lurching, high-wire drum beat and reverb-drenched vocals. Another track, “Latin,” is mostly distortion and drums, but still manages to include a catchy lead vocal hook before disappearing into a haze of feedback.

Two of the most accessible songs are “Strawberry Guillotine” — no doubt an ode to the hippie classic, “Strawberry Alarm Clock” — and “Message from the Law.” The former track weaves some anti-war imagery over a marshal beat: “Into the future with you/Down in a watery grave/With a commanding view.” “Message From the Law” sports a Beatles-like guitar line and some nice vocal harmonies.

Sic Alps is certainly in debt to the 1960’s San Francisco values of trippy sounds, jangly guitars and political consciousness. But they are talented enough to take these classic features and make them their own noisy creation.