

It started with a mysterious 16-second commercial during an episode of "Saturday Night Live." Two months later, the compulsively catchy disco song teased in the ad, "Get Lucky," is No. 1 in Britain and France and has been covered by countless fans.

The tune is by the French duo Daft Punk, house-music pioneers known for their space-age helmets and Grammy award-winning dance songs.

"Get Lucky," the groovy first single from their new album, has already been dubbed the song of the summer. In the three weeks since its release, the song has sold more than one million copies world-wide, springing to the top of the iTunes charts. The video of the song has been viewed more than 15 million times on YouTube. On April 19, the day of the song's release, it broke Spotify's U.S. and British records for the most streams in one day. It's No. 1 on digital sales charts in 55 countries, according to the band's spokesperson.

The entire album, "Random Access Memories," comes out May 21 on Columbia Records.

Over the past three months, a small team led by Daft Punk ( Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo) and manager Paul Hahn has orchestrated a drip-feed marketing campaign that has left almost everything about the album up to the imagination. Billboard ads across the world showed no more than a helmet and the Columbia logo. The "Saturday Night Live" commercials, three at last count, are also minimal, featuring only the Daft Punk logo, the album's title or a disco-flavored performance of "Get Lucky" featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers. The ad with Mr. Williams, who is known as Pharrell, debuted at Coachella music festival, stirring up attendees' hopes for a surprise performance by the French duo and sending the rumor mill into overdrive.

It wasn't long before Instagram was littered with snapshots of the billboards and interviews with Daft Punk collaborators had gone viral on YouTube.

The stealth campaign to limit the group's exposure has helped make "Random Access Memories" one of the most hotly anticipated releases of 2013. By holding back from TV and concert appearances, the group and its management went against the industry-accepted wisdom that you can only hold fans' attention by plying them with nonstop appearances and regularly dispensed songs. Such suspense is rare in today's rapid-fire music industry, where emerging DJs often forego labels and albums, which can come with years of waiting, to independently release tracks every few weeks.

"There is a minimalism in our approach that creates an absence of information," Mr. Hahn said. "And we notice our fans tend to throw themselves into the breach, or try to fill the empty spaces."

Widely hailed as the forefathers of today's electronic-dance-music revolution, the group has a devoted cult following. The duo ended their relationship with EMI's Virgin Records after more than 15 years to join forces with Columbia.

Rob Stringer, the Columbia Records chairman responsible for the new partnership, said Messrs. Bangalter and Homem-Christo approached the company with a very precise vision for the album's campaign. "They brought us a book called 'Rock 'n' Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip' and said, 'This is what we want,' " Mr. Stringer said. "They don't see a negative to being mainstream, and why should they? Michael Jackson was mainstream. Pink Floyd was mainstream.''

When it came time to spread the word, the pair turned to their longtime publicist Kathryn Frazier, of the Chicago-based public-relations firm Biz 3. Instead of emailing the preview album to journalists and label executives, she and Mr. Hahn insisted upon listening to it with them face-to-face, phone-free and from beginning to end, even if it meant flying to a person's home or office to make it happen. "It was less about being protective, pretentious jerks and more about just getting people to slow down and really feel these songs," she said. "They call for human contact." Of course, the strategy is also a defense against songs leaking, which would have deflated their whole campaign.

The press-shy musicians also recruited others to be their mouthpieces. They tapped the Creator's Project, an arts-and-technology initiative financed by Vice and Intel, to produce a series of documentary-style videos spotlighting Daft Punk's collaborators on "Random Access Memories." Interviews with producers Mr. Rodgers, who has worked with Chic, as well as Donna Summers's former producer Giorgio Moroder, emphasized the album's homage to the heyday of disco, while the participation of a younger generation of producers (Chilly Gonzales, Panda Bear, Pharrell) kept things from feeling overly retro.

The ultimate sign of interest and respect today is when fans and fellow musicians perform their own versions of a hit. YouTube is already awash with "Get Lucky" covers. (An office favorite: Russian guitarist Igor Presnyakov's acoustic guitar version.)

"This is all part of the theater of Daft Punk," Ms. Frazier, their publicist, said. "They're having fun with this. That teasing—a little here, a little there. It builds energy. It feels good when you're not just handed something every time."

Write to Megan Buerger at megan.buerger@wsj.com