Midway through recording their exhilarating new self-titled album, Nashville indie rockers Future Thieves left the studio and hit the road. It was difficult to walk away from the undeniable stride they’d hit, but the band had nearly two months of shows in Europe followed by a lengthy string of US dates on their calendar, and that meant completing the record would simply have to wait. Far from derailing the group’s progress, though, the road actually brought fresh perspective, with each performance revealing new depths and dimension to the music. The material had the unique opportunity to live and breathe and grow onstage every night, undergoing sometimes radical evolutions in instrumentation and arrangement as the tour progressed. By the time Future Thieves returned to the studio, the songs were battle-tested and sturdier than ever, and the resulting album is a remarkable showcase of growth and maturity from a band poised for a major breakout.

Recorded primarily at El Paso’s famed Sonic Ranch with producer and longtime collaborator Alex Jarvis, ‘Future Thieves’ introduces threads of pop and electronic music into the band’s organic sensibilities, generating dreamy soundscapes and hypnotic grooves with ethereal synthesizers, vintage drum machines, and shimmering guitars. Balance (of light and dark, hope and disappointment, future and past) is the ultimate goal of a number of tracks here—from the angular “On The Run,” which wrestles with indecision and regret, to the chiming “Dark Spin,” which swims in a churning sea of memories unleashed by running into an ex—and Collett’s lyrics often grapple with growing up and accepting that nothing lasts forever. There’s an indefatigable optimism to songs like the bright and splashy “Prom Night,” though, as the effervescent tale of two lovers committing to each other despite all the outside forces pushing them apart reveals a band that’s ultimately romantic at heart.

The lengthy process behind the Future Thieves’ new release is a far cry from their most recent record, a live-in-the-studio album captured entirely in an hour. Comprised largely of material from the band’s critically acclaimed 2015 debut, ‘Horizon Line,’ ‘Live at Blue Rock’ garnered praise everywhere from Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco to Guitar World , which hailed it as a “collection of turbo-charged Americana tunes.” Relix similarly raved that the album “captures the quartet’s spirit and intensity,” while The Tennessean simply lauded the band as “incredible.” They followed it up in 2017 with “Sucker,” an infectious single that earned love from Billboard, who highlighted the band’s newfound “infusion of...electro-pop grooves,” and Jimmy Fallon, who premiered the official video on The Tonight Show ’s Tumblr. The group’s searing live show, meanwhile, helped them notch festival appearances from Bonnaroo to Summerfest and prompted Live Nation to name them to their Ones To Watch series.