When Electric Youth lent—in collaboration with French artist College—their song “Real Hero” to the Drive soundtrack back in 2011, the song scratched an itch for the kind of lush, synth-pop polished ballads you probably didn’t know you were craving at the time. Long before the heady synthesizer-laden soundtrack and 70-80s nostalgia revival led by shows like Stranger Things, an entire genre of music has built itself on a style of cinematic, synth-pop fueled sonics. But Electric Youth—comprised of vocalist Bronwyn Griffin and multi-instrumentalist Austin Garrick—isn’t simply pining for some bygone decade on Memory Emotion. Their follow-up to their debut Innerworld and a culmination of all their work crafting film soundtracks, Memory Emotion ebbs and flows with life teeming from its electronic landscapes.

On album opener “The Life,” Griffin’s vocals tangle themselves gleefully around a spiraling well of glittery synths—and all at once it’s clear this isn’t just a repackaged nostalgia for 80s electronica. Griffin and Garrick are as firmly rooted in the present as they are the future—which is exactly where their sound sits in flux. Akin more to the early work of contemporaries like M83, Memory Emotion switch-foots between its lovingly, intoxicating dance-readiness and its patience in building colossal space amidst its soundscapes. “ARAWA”—an acronym for “As Restless As We Are”—and a modern reaction to disasters like the Malibu, CA wildfires—splits the difference between the two sonic gears Electric Youth operate on.

Watch the video for Electric Youth’s “ARAWA” off their new album:

Electric Youth just played an album release show on August 17 in New York at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg. Their new album Memory Emotion is out now via Watts Arcade Inc./Last Gang Records. Visit Electric Youth’s Facebook and Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.