On their first album in four years, Brooklyn’s Blondes hone in on more overt dance floor energies while maintaining the dreamy introspection that is their signature. Just as its individual compositions follow an internal narrative logic, the album’s track-by-track development has all the bends and arcs of a live set. Following OP Actual, most of the album is quicker to get to the point, letting beats develop before unfurling a mesh of interlocking melodic and textural elements. Warmth wanders into near-psychedelic terrain. Haar and Steinman’s impulses are too subtle to be fully hedonistic, but Blondes are pleasure-seekers all the same.

When a rich ambient progression soothes a shivering patch midway through Stringer, or when single KDM locks into a swelling aqueous groove, it’s hard, quite simply, to not feel good. Such moments are still punctuated by tense interludes. All You, for instance, is built from sawing tones that ricochet as if locked in a claustrophobic, subterranean space.

The band have often sounded like a project that’s in dialogue more with itself than with exterior influences; the duo look less to their record collections than to their live sets as a jumping-off point for new material. Even as they bend aspects of their intent, their voices maintain a distinctive clarity, and their style of production maintains its vivid palette. The album stands to resonate with those seeking a transportive experience whose peaks and valleys never overwhelm.