Why is Yo La Tengo’s music so hard to understand? Is it the band’s experimentalism? Is it its incredibly diverse history? Is it the members’ masterful but unusual musicianship?

For Knoxville’s fresh Yo La Tengo fans, as well as the hard-core oldies, these questions may be answered this Saturday when Yo La Tengo visits the Bijou Theatre at 8 p.m. However, for such a historically ambiguous group, expectations for enlightenment are limited.

“I don’t think about it,” Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew said. “I don’t think about reaching people or potentially passing information to anybody.”

Yo La Tengo is the brainchild of Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, a married couple who decided to create a quartet in 1984. After trying several potential band members, the two decided on lead guitarist Dave Schramm and bassist Mike Lewis for their inaugural recording of their first song, “The River of Water,” and their first album, “Riding the Tiger,” released two years later.

Shortly after the band’s debut, Schramm and Lewis left and were replaced by Stephen Wichnewski, placing Kaplan’s lead guitar in the foreground. The trio produced both the “New Wave Hot Dogs” album that put Yo La Tengo on the rock-and-roll map and “Fakebook,” which revealed the band’s large cover-band repertoire, for which they have since been well known.

McNew admits that playing a cover sometimes feels like playing an original composition.

“Sometimes we’ll try to do a cover song in a completely new style than its original, and sometimes we’ll do it in its original version; it really just depends on the situation and the songs,” he said.

With the induction of McNew in the early 1990s, the band entered into its most experimental period, throwing down records like “Painful,” “Electr-O-Pura” and “I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One.” It was also during this time that Yo La Tengo collected its incredibly loyal fan base through an extensive touring schedule.

Carissa Stolting, assistant music director for the WUTK radio station, said that her first live experience with Yo La Tengo exposed her to the true nature of their fans.

“It seems like with Yo La Tengo, they don’t just have fans; they have really, really huge fans,” Stolting said. “I went with a friend that was a huge fan, so I was just on the outskirts. But I was extremely impressed.”

As the group cleared the millennium, its experimental elements started to solidify, clarifying the group’s organic sound. Yo La Tengo’s last album, “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass,” presents the band in the clearest form Yo La Tengo devotees have ever seen and may ever see.

“What I really enjoy about (this album), in comparison with all the other music that gets lumped under ‘indie rock,’ is that it is so much more refined,” Stolting said. “It is by far, hands down, one of the best albums of 2006. They’re definitely mastering their art.”

Yet, McNew said that the group never actually feels any different, whether or not it sounds that way.

“Maybe on this record, we’ve focused our elements a little more,” he said. “Maybe we played something that seemed surprising for most people to hear, but it didn’t really feel surprising to us. When we play, the three of us are more in the moment. That’s pretty much all we’re thinking about.”

McNew also added that since the musicians have always been immersed in the world of playing and listening to music, political or social messages are often lost in their natural art of playing.

“You can take the music of Public Enemy, maybe their first three or four records; they were extremely aware politically — so are we, but we don’t communicate that into music the same way,” McNew said. “We don’t think about music in that way; we do what feels natural.”

So what about understanding Yo La Tengo’s message? Perhaps the answer to a true understanding of the group lies in the simple absence of logic and reason; maybe true insight takes a little musical appreciation and a lot of imagination. At least, that’s how McNew feels.

“It’s no fun revealing the meanings of songs or the meanings of lyrics or titles; I think things like that are best left up to you,” he said. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred your imagination will provide a much better answer than the real answer.”

It’s no finite conclusion, but maybe it is enough to say, “I’ve got it! Yo La Tengo!”