The last time we heard from Minneapolis synthpop crew Poliça, it was 2017, and they were teaming up with the orchestral shoegaze collective s t a r g a z e on the collaborative album Music For The Long Emergency. Poliça haven’t released an album of their own since 2016’s United Crushers. But today, they announce their big return. Early next year, they’ll be back with a new full-length called When We Stay Alive.

The group recorded the new album with producer and longtime collaborator Ryan Olson, former leader of the Minneapolis collective Gayngs. Spoon’s Jim Eno mixed it. The band wrote about half the album before last year, when frontwoman Channy Leaneagh fell off her roof and broke a vertebra, but the experience informs tracks like first single “Driving.”

“Driving” is song that pulls off that old Depeche Mode trick of being dark and throbbing but still catchy. Leaneagh says that it’s a song about healing. The video, from director Isaac Gale, starts off as an ominous close-up on a spinning record, and it turns into a warning about what might happen if you play Poliça records too loud. Below, watch the “Driving” video and check out the new album’s tracklist.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Driving”
02 “TATA”
03 “Fold Up”
04 “Feel Life”
05 “Little Threads”
06 “Be Again”
07 “Steady”
08 “Forget Me Now”
09 “Blood Moon”
10 “Sea Without Blue”

When We Stay Alive is out 1/31/20 on Memphis Industries.