The LA trio Automatic are somewhat of a rarity: a rock band signed to the traditionally hip-hop/funk/jazz-focused Stones Throw. They also have shows lined up with Parquet Courts, Tame Impala, and the Osees, so it seems like they’re going places this year both literally and metaphorically speaking.

Izzy Glaudini (synths, lead vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals), and Halle Saxon-Gaines (bass) just announced their second album Excess, and its opening track “New Beginning” is promising. The song twists Glaudini’s deadpan melodies around a simple, insistent bass groove and lockstep motorik drums, punctuated with chunky blasts of fuzzed-out keyboard. There’s some ’60s pop kitsch in the sound, some post-punk and new wave, some Stereolab-worthy sophisticated propulsion. According to the band, the whole album is fixated on the intersection between ’70s underground culture and the ’80s mainstream: “That fleeting moment when what was once cool quickly turned and became mainstream, all for the sake of consumerism.”

Director Ambar Navarro’s “New Beginning” video is inspired by the Swedish sci-fi movie Aniara. It’s about saving this planet rather than pursuing the false hope of an exit to elsewhere in the galaxy when Earth’s environment collapses. Check it out below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “New Beginning”
02 “On The Edge”
03 “Skyscraper”
04 “Realms”
05 “Venus Hour”
06 “Automaton”
07 “Teen Beat”
08 “NRG”
09 “Lucy”
10 “Turn Away”

Excess is out 6/24 on Stones Throw.