Last night, Mikal Cronin served as musical guest on Conan. That means Cronin is now a big enough deal to command late-night airtime, which is good news for the Bay Area garage-pop master and good news for us. Cronin played “Change,” one of the many ridiculously catchy road-trip songs on his new album MCII, and a string section backed him up, to excellent effect. And while Cronin may have looked a tiny bit tentative on that stage, he sure didn’t sound that way. Check out the performance below.

MCII is out now on Merge. It came out the same week as Savages’ Silence Yourself, which means it might be the year’s best album that didn’t get an Album Of The Week or a Premature Evaluation.