Houston, TX minimalist pop trio, including multi-instrumentalist Austin Smith, along with drummer Zach Alderman (Deep Cuts) and keyboardist/vocalist Vicki Lynn (Black Kite) produce sharp, minimal and often haunting pop songs. The self-titled debut offers a dark, danceable mix of booming rhythms, whammied guitars, and spooky synthesizer swells, all of which form the bedrock beneath massive earworm vocal melodies.

Smith, the group’s genre-hopping mastermind, admits to a heavy diet of ABBA records during the EP’s synthesis, “I originally wanted to make slow disco songs. I’d been a layer-heavy songwriter in the past and I wanted to experiment with limitation. Before, I’d use anything at my disposal to fill maximum room in a song, so for JERK I worked inside a set of rules where I couldn’t do that, which forced some inventive creativity on my end.”