Worldpeace DMT’s Stick Around For Tea Is Not Your Father’s Laptop Twee

A band name like Worldpeace DMT comes with certain associations. When it first crossed my screen, I assumed the London duo made some kind of bleary-eyed art-school scumbag music. In reality, last year's debut album The Velvet Underground & Rowan was a sampledelic shout-along pop album that landed bandmates Leo Fincham and Rowan Miles on the vanguard of the so-called laptop twee movement. Songs like "Love Yourself" — with its acoustic strums, rumbling digital bass, cascading video game sounds, and childlike singsong vocals — did make sense as a more boisterous counterpart to ear. Or maybe a brighter, friendlier answer to Bassvictim, wherein the Go! Team factored in more heavily than Crystal Castles. But it seems Worldpeace DMT weren't about to lean into their trendy subgenre designation. Over the summer, they ditched the electronics on their Flowers Powers mixtape, a playful indie-pop exercise that featured a "Big Yellow Taxi" cover and multiple songs about Jesus. Now comes another LP, and it sounds like neither the laptop twee of their debut or the bleary drug music of my imagination. Instead, today's new Stick Around For Tea begins with some prime Belle & Sebastian cosplay...