Belle and Sebastian

"The Party Line"

BY Alex HudsonPublished Oct 28, 2014

No, that filtering intro doesn't signify the start of an EDM banger — rather, it's the surprising new single from Belle and Sebastian, who just released "The Party Line" from the forthcoming album Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance.

While the band have occasionally flirted with slick, danceable sounds over the past decade (like on 2004's "Your Cover's Blown"), they've never sounded quite as electronic as this. "The Party Line" contains pulsing, slinky dance grooves that are flecked with giddy synths, funky guitar passages and catchy pop vocals. It eventually culminates in a pounding drum crescendo that sounds a little more organic, but this is still a long way from the group's hushed, folksy origins. It's bound to get lots of boys and girls dancing, in peacetime or otherwise.

Hear "The Party Line" below.

Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance is due out on January 20 through Matador.

Starting at 1:30 p.m. EDT today (October 28), the band will be taking part in a Q&A session on their Facebook page.

UPDATE: Belle and Sebastian have also announced a small handful of North American dates, including a show at Toronto's Massey Hall on April 1. You can see all their scheduled stops here.

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