Album: New Young Pony Club, The Optimist (The Numbers)

After their poised punk-funk debut, one worriedwhether Tahita Bulmer and co knew how to follow it. But though they've been mostly silent for two and a half years, it hasn't been time wasted.

The Optimist is taut and dark, like The XX learning to dance, with basslines that seize your spine and hooks that snag your brain. Given their genre, however, calling a song "Rapture" when it's not a Blondie cover is debatable. This is the follow-up album CSS should have made. The good news is that it's the follow-up NYPC did make.