Indie rock. Named after the indie labels that produced the music, it has morphed into an abyss filled with guitar beating hipsters who in reality have no idea what they’re doing. But on rare, momentous occasions, a band will break the mold and craft something beautiful. Meric Long and Logan Kroeber’s band The Dodos is one of these exceptions.

Their new album, Carrier, embodies what The Dodos have tried to accomplish over their past few albums. From their humble beginnings with confining themselves with only an acoustic guitar and drums, the band has since expanded to adding an electric guitar with former bandmate Keaton Snyder. Sadly, Snyder passed away in his sleep a little over a year ago. As a tribute to Snyder, Long based the instrumentation of Carrier  around an electric guitar. While the electric guitar is incorporated beautifully and seamlessly, it can end up sounding like noise, rock in songs like “Confidence,” which starts off with at a slow, chill, melodic pace but then turns into a two-minute jam sesh of Long and Meric going back and forth.

Long took a new approach in tackling this new album. Unlike in the past, Long wrote the lyrics before he wrote the music. In doing this, he was really able to focus on the meaning of each song instead of just pairing words with music.