The first time I listened to the Envelopes album, I thought they sounded like The Unicorns. You know, pop with too much silly stuff going on? But really, that was selling these guys short. Their songs are better than that.

The truth is that while their songs are quirky and bounce and stray in many different ways, it's not exactly "silly." Catchy, maybe, but the intent of this five-piece isn't to make you chuckle at their cleverness. It's to get you to rock with a small smile on your face. And they do so with a lot of guitars, synths, samples, and scattered time signatures.

They can be compared to Deerhoof (weirdness) meets Pixies (rhythms) meets Stereolab (synth savvy), but really this is just something new. And new is always good... except when it's not, of course.

Envelopes play with Ratatat at The Empty Bottle, on Monday, September 11th.