Mysterious group Scent sign to Wichita and unveil bewitching EP KIM

The three-piece - only the second band to sign to Wichita following an unsolicited demo email - are keeping details to a minimum, describing themselves variously as "three mammals in a basement lounge taking turns to look hungrily at white-socked feet through a lopsided crack in the ceiling" and "a neutral/nocturnal pop group happiest when fed and cleaned by forces from above, half-lit by the sounds of a vacuum choir in the ether." Scent also state that they're "hot, sick and fragile" and that "they do what they can with their nubile instruments, though sometimes it doesn’t produce the results they want."

"He hung skinny in the basement for a week or two," the band say in a note which reads like a Patrick Bateman fever dream. "Didn’t go outside. Blindsided by vacuous jump cuts, I guess. I dunno, I didn’t ask him. He had a nice face and slow hair. You know, the kind that gradually primps itself upon exiting the folds of a dirty pillow. Great body too. Huh. Played guitar a bit, probably better at bass. Not a bad drummer. Wore old t-shirts and a selection of European tracksuit bottoms. Yeah, yeah. Don’t shoot. There were two other kids too, I mean, they could have been older. Some chick, no, uh, guy. Sung a lot. Probably sung more than spoke. Recorded thousands of hours of this stuff in a loft. Something about 'the great leveller'. Pretty spurious. That other guy, though? Nice and tan. Power in his wrists. Good record collection, if that matters. Sugar-moulded face before he hit the showers with the rest of them."

Gibberish aside, new release KIM is pretty exciting: the title track traverses the disaparate worlds of The Ink Spots, chillwave, and heady, jangly funk; "LIFE COACH" is a muted '80s jam with warped warbling and a sunny Mediterranean cool; third number "AMYGDALA" glitches and fizzes between opiate-addled psych and Manchester in the '90s. It's immensely dislocated but somehow effortlessly smooth.