"It's not where you're from," Ian Brown of The Stone Roses once said. "It's where you're at." Wise words, but not entirely true. With Nurture, SIZARR's second album – and the international interest that it's likely to awaken – there's no doubt that the country from which they've emerged will attract attention. SIZARR, you see, began life in a little village called Godramstein, close to the small town of Landau, and that means they're from Germany. There's no need to apologise for this, of course. While for many years outsiders eyed German musicians with suspicion, times have changed: bands like Can and Kraftwerk are now name-checked as artistic innovators, while the country leads the way in electronic music. SIZARR, however, are neither krautrock practitioners nor dance floor pioneers. Instead, they're a fascinating, wise-beyond-their-years trio whose unusual hybrid of influences has defied attempts to classify them despite their being wildly, seductively accessible.

No doubt it's this gutsy originality that's found SIZARR swiftly recognised as one of the most exciting bands their country's seen in years. The three youngsters from the provinces were universally hailed for their mature, imaginative sound; for their singer's potent, poetic voice; for their intense live performances. Such admiration hasn't been limited to their homeland, either: Clash "swooned" at what The Guardian recognised as a "very distinctive style", while Rolling Stone proclaimed that their debut album Psycho Boy Happy "exceeds the praises it received in advance". Not bad for three guys who'd barely finished school when the record was released.

SIZARR – whose indefinable style is informed by everything from post-punk to electronica, from indie rock to hip hop – were formed by Fabian Altstötter, Philipp Hülsenbeck and Marc Übel in 2009. In hindsight, it's not surprising that the line from Psycho Boy Happy that caught the German media's attention was "The kids take over now". SIZARR had just left their teens when it was released, and yet they were selling out national tours, sharing stages with acts like Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective and Editors, and stealing the limelight from SxSW to Sonar, from Iceland Airwaves to Germany's own MELT. Furthermore, their debut climbed the German charts, and was nominated for the Critics' Choice ECHO, arguably the country's leading musical award.

By now, they'd left their village roots behind, moving around to live in Mannheim, Heidelberg, Leipzig and Hamburg. (Nowadays, Altstötter lives in Berlin, Hülsenbeck in Hamburg, and Übel in Frankfurt.) Still, they approached the making of Nurture much as they'd once started out, with Altstötter also continuing to write most of his lyrics in English. He admits that one reason for this had been that "singing in German just sounded weird to me, and it was hard not to feel ashamed by it." But, he adds candidly, "this also went hand in hand with our ambition to not solely be known in Germany. As beautiful as the language is, not a lot of people want to hear it!"

As it happens, Altstötter's attitude to his homeland and its native tongue has since changed. "It's easier to say less poetic things in English, so it was a more natural way for me to talk about the not-so-glamorous side effects of growing up," he laughs. "But now we've found loads of things that are likable about this country's music! They just lay a little further back in time." Consequently, Nurture makes no secret of the band's roots, with Altstötter throwing in brief flashes of his Teutonic language: "Oh einsamkeit," he sings shrewdly of loneliness on 'The Baggage Man', "your company is a devious crime," and on 'Clam' he sings of confusion, and of how "I will take the long road/ with my head entzwei".

This occasional bilingual approach adds unexpected exoticism to SIZARR's songs, but his texts – addressing identity, youth, aging and loneliness – are as likely to catch the attention as the band's music. Nurture is perfectly paced and brim full of what Germans call 'Ohrwürmer' – earworms – that wriggle playfully before burying themselves deep in your consciousness. There's an unlikely '80s feel to 'Slender Gender', 'Timesick' and 'Slightly', while 'I May Have Lied To You' twists and turns among the ghosts of The Smiths. But there's always a singularity to their style that's definitively SIZARR. 'Baggage Man' has an irresistible swagger, and though 'Scooter Accident' takes time to warm its engines, when it does, it roars into life, veering thrillingly into unexpected territory. Then there's 'Untitled', which pares things back to just a piano and the flutter of Altstötter's electrifying voice, while 'How Much For This'' delayed pleasures bring the album to a triumphant, rousing close.

So what's more important? Where SIZARR are from? Or where they're at? Most likely it's both of these, and yet it's probably neither. Does it even matter when they're forging ahead at such a pace? Even the band themselves humbly consider the album merely "a snapshot in time" of their constantly evolving music. No: what matters is that SIZARR are a world-class band, and they've grown up faster than most. Their nature may be to press forward relentlessly, but on this occasion there's little doubt: Nurture is a winner.

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