Recover EP
By posting two fantastic synthpop songs, “Lies” and then “The Mother We Share,” to the Internet last year, Chvrches became blog big shots and Passion Pit’s opening act. Their EP lacks those two songs, which are still easily found on the Scottish band’s SoundCloud, and introduces one fantastic new synth-pop song, “Recover.” Lauren Mayberry and her two beardo bandmates revisit the frosty New Wave of Yaz and early Depeche Mode while adding staccato, percussive glitches that echo but don’t mimic the Eighties. And Mayberry sings about deceit, decay and distance in curled, Scots-accented vowels – she can make a single word, “don’t,” sound as defiant and melancholy as a Byron poem.