Californian indie stalwarts Local Natives have returned with their fifth record, Time Will Wait For No One.

It’s a concise, sub-35 minute album chock-full of lush harmonies and pleasing, infectious instrumentation, all the way through the brief title track until the conclusive fuzzed-out triumph of “Paradise.”

The title track wastes no time establishing the vocal harmonies that the listener will be treated to over the following half hour. What begins as a Fleet Foxes-esque acoustic piece quickly develops into its own standalone song with the emergence of the rhythm section’s pulse, specifically the thuds of the bass.

“Just Before The Morning” sees Local Natives letting their vocals shine over fresh guitar chord progressions, where the sad chords are perfectly placed around and between the bright ones that inhabit most of their songs.

The vocals on TWWFNO spend a lot of time intertwining themselves with the layered walls of noise, walls that are often created by having multiple vocalists on a single track. “Paper Lanterns” and its synth-driven chorus is among the most delicious of ear candy moments on the record. Each line rises and falls in step with the sunny canvas the music of the song provides on its way to being one of the album’s highlights.

Another highlight is the beautiful “Ava,” a slower tune that features an innumerable amount of instruments in its biggest swells, swells so big that it feels wrong to call the song’s most seismic moment a “chorus,” when something like “crescendo” would do it so much more justice.

While these slow dances are among the record’s highlights, the band cracks their knuckles a bit in the beach-garage bounce of “NYE.” The electric guitar playing shines more here than perhaps anywhere on the rest of the record. Once again, each chord slots perfectly into its assigned area, doing nothing but contributing to the first-listen charm of both record and band.

With TWWFNO, Local Natives have released a delightful pop record artistic enough in its songwriting and instrumentation that the indiest of indieheads can enjoy it and the most pop-leaning of pop aficionados can appreciate it as well. It’s a brief listen that extends far beyond its runtime in its reverberating, sticky melodies and choruses.