From the first measure of NYC outfit Kassie Krut’s debut album, you get the crunchy industrial sense that this band is indebted to their influences. As it turns out, listening to the EP, their influences are wide and varied. Whether it’s the dub, grime, or garage that they grew up with in London, or the Brainiac feel of “Hooh Beat,” or the industrial pop of Sleigh Bells on many of the songs. “Something about your style / something about your eyes / something about the way you drive / something about the prize.”

It’s a five song EP and doesn’t overstay its welcome, with a satisfying shot of “Espresso” thrown in there for a mid-afternoon break, a one-something minute instrumental that shows their prowess with their programmed and live instruments. Much of the album is a satisfying mix of programmed and live instrument songs, and Eve Alpert’s vocals steal the show. “Gonna get down / gonna get on top,” she sings in one of the album’s singles, “Blood,” with its frenetic beat and synthesizer.

Like Sleigh Bells before them, there is a sort of cheerleader sensibility to many of the songs, with an industrial twist, and the album is a love song to the high-achieving “freaks.” Two of the members were already part of a successful indie band out of Philadelphia, called Palm, with a decidedly less industrial feel. But many of the great elements from that band show up in Kassie Krut: the erratic beats, the sugary and sophisticated vocals, a satisfying randomness in arrangement.

It feels a bit like the album is an attempt to embrace simplicity and increase the volume, at once. Even the short length of the album is a statement of intent: injecting as much visceral catchiness as possible into today’s distractable ears. It perhaps loses something in the exchange—Palm’s intelligent lyrics, satisfying clean instrumentation, and more avant-experimental song structure (which yet translates in an interesting way to their new work)—but it is by no means a downgrade, but more like a pivot. They sound more serious, more poised to seize the moment that finding themselves in NYC has afforded them. “I’m a racing man / gunning for the runner at the front / Till I’m cast out far beyond the gallows / cast out far beyond a doubt.” They’re many years into their musical career, and their ability to shift their sound is impressive and interesting. You don’t have to have heard their old stuff to dig their new stuff, but it is a strong pivot.

order Kassie Krut HERE