Yeasayer

"Like their Brooklyn neighbors Dirty Projectors and Animal Collective, Yeasayer are pioneers of a scene that refuses to choose between a sense of experimental adventure and pure pop pleasure. It's a balance they're perfecting as they grow older: On their 2007 debut, they were freak-folkies with a knack for creating hot Eastern-flavored grooves (check out the hallucinatory video for "Wait for the Summer"). On their follow-up, they dive deeper into electronics and big Eighties beats (literally: They hired Peter Gabriel's old drummer). The result is simultaneously stranger and poppier, more celebratory and more serious.

"The Children" opens with clattering beats, synth heaves and processed vocals that crossbreed T-Pain with the Residents — yet at the core it's a gentle ballad about vigilant, and potentially vengeful, kids. "Ambling Alp" is a hugely catchy anthem framed as a father-to-son pep talk, dated by references to foes of prizefighter Joe Louis; its scrumptious reggae-pop chorus and falsetto bridge unspool amid splashing water and ricocheting ray guns. The most killing jam is "O.N.E.," a dubby blast of samba-spiked funk that finds singer Anand Wilder wrestling with a love jones like a schizo Daryl Hall; it cries out for a dozen remixes. It's all held together with thundering, radio-ready drums and choruses that wouldn't sound out of place in a Depeche Mode song. These kids want it all, and with Odd Blood, Yeasayer get it."

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/31959726/review/31962027/odd_blood