It’d be incredibly easy to write DIIV off as too trendy to be worthwhile. After all, their formula of Real Estate + Joy Division x Krautrock is tailor-made for Pitchfork’s Best New Music designation. Pitchfork also featured them in their Rising column when their name was still Dive, months before they had even finished this, their first LP. And inevitably, when this album finally dropped, the hype Pitchfork created around them culminated with the coveted “Best New Album” stamp on the top of the review (a portion of that review was featured on one of the stickers on the shrink wrap around the record when I bought it).

But say what you will about Pitchfork and their earned reputation for being pretentious (9.5 for Frank Ocean’s channel Orange? Please), but occasionally, they’re spot on. Consider for example some of last year’s left field Best New Album recipients–The War on Drugs, Kurt Vile, Washed Out–and even the legendary albums that had that stamp on their reviews–Kid A, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, Funeral. While I’m not about to suppose that DIIV will reach that same sort of legendary status as Radiohead, Wilco, or even Arcade Fire, it is a case where Pitchfork definitely knew what they were talking about.

DIIV as a group has a fantastic talent for taking the best parts of surf rock (sunshiny vocals, reverby guitar lines), post-punk (driving bass melodies, moody drums), and Krautrock (an almost mechanical precision, hypnotizing repeated figures) and combining them into a surprising amalgam that’s as dense as it is accessible. Each of these pieces have tracks where they are the main ingredient–the sunshiny How Long Have You Known, the dark, bass driven Doused, and the twin instrumentals called Druun that open each side of the record. The rest of the album exists in the space between those three corners, and despite the reverberated-to-incoherence lyrics and stark similarities between the songs, the album’s highest rewards come to those who sit and wait in that space for forty minutes and let the music wash over them.