On their second full-length, Chicago’s The Atari Star play near-perfect three-minute pop songs based on tight rhythms with a few odd quirks thrown in to keep things interesting. Imagine late-70s new wave along the order of The Cars (the surging "Winter Birthmark"), Gary Numan (the whirring synths of "The Hidden Measure"), and Devo (the herky-jerky "Black Licorice and Gasoline Fumes") crossed with early-80s L.A. power pop bands like The Plimsouls and 20/20 (especially on "Invisible Summers" and "Ordinary Clocks").

Singer-guitarist Marc Ruvolo has a thin, pleading voice whose lyrics evince a fixation with all things space: whether outer ("Capricorn"), inner ("Occasional Genius and Everyday Polite Terror"), the kind that fills the distance between people ("Walk With Me in the Morning Hours"), or all three at once ("Apologies in Advance"). The opener, "Hands," is a kind of static-filled sound collage, somewhat reminiscent of Sonic Youth’s "Providence." The slow-moving, emotionally closer, "Hands Accidentally Touch" rewrites "Hands" to good effect.

These are the kind of tunes that would have filled the soundtrack of some movie 20 years past like Valley Girl or Fast Times. It’s also the sort of music that L.A.’s own KROQ would have picked up on around the same time, a time when they were a little braver and a whole lot smarter.