This four-song In The Fall 12″ is a great warm-up for synthesized North Carolina-to-Baltimore “post wave” trio Future Islands super second album In Evening Air. They’re like seasoned, salty ’80s UK veterans though they formed in Greenville, NC in 2003. The songs are dense, catchy, depressed, ecstatic, cathartic. Samuel T. Herring’s vocals and lyrics resonate like Tom Waits after listening to a Frog Eyes album. The EP includes an extended version of In Evening Air‘s “Tin Man” along with a song from 2007 (“Virgo Distracts”), an In Evening Air outtake that didn’t fit with the others (“Awake & Dreaming”) and gorgeous standout “In The Fall,” a downcast synth ballad the band recorded with the Celebration’s Katrina Ford in the aftermath of a blizzard a few weeks after finishing the full-length. Winter, yeah, but the bleary-eyed autumnal cover shot by Bruce Willen captures the mood. Basically, use whatever season it takes to suck the Spring out of a room.

• Future Islands – “In the Fall (Feat. Katrina Ford)”Download

The In The Fall EP is out 4/6 out via Thrill Jockey. In Evening Air‘s out 5/4, also via Thrill Jockey. Keep watch for their Post Office Wave Chapel 12″, which includes collaborations with No Age and Victoria Legrand and remixes by Javelin and Pictureplane. The release is a collaboration with NYC art collective Free Danger. Also: Keep watch for a U.S. tour.