Miike Snow—Happy to You

Britney Spears has said that “Toxic,” her infectious, Grammy-winning hit from her 2003 album In the Zone, is her favorite song she’s done in her entire career.

Even if you don’t care much for Britney herself, you have to acknowledge good taste. The song’s success and subsequent permanence in our music memory can be attributed in large part to its Swedish co-writers and producers, Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg, who are now two-thirds of the electronic pop band Miike Snow. Together with American vocalist Andrew Wyatt, the band has released their sophomore album Happy to You, once again blending classic pop elements with an electronic overlay, but this time eschewing dance-centric territory of their self-titled 2009 debut and focusing more on melody than groove.

Not to say this constitutes a huge departure from Miike Snow: “The Wave” is a piano-driven ballad reinforced with techno beats, much like the first’s album “Silvia,” and “Archipelago” mirrors “Sans Soleil” in its quiet, celestial composition. But Happy to You features more songs with elegant rather than funky explosions of sound. “Black Tin Box,” which includes fellow Swede Lykke Li, is a haunting, outer spacey track that benefits from the sparse musical backdrop, shifting the attention to the lyrical interplay between Wyatt and Li. “Bavarian #1 (Say You Will)” uses synth and steady percussion, but both fade to the background during Wyatt’s echoing titular refrain, a beautiful chorus saturated with Bon Iver-esque yearning. For the closer, the band returns to its energetic orchestra-infused sound with “Paddling Out,” a spirited rally cry that mobilizes the listener for repeat plays.

While you probably can’t gyrate in your glittery flesh-colored bodysuit to any of the songs on Happy to You, Miike Snow knows how to produce music for 2012: tracks that touches on the most accessible of pop tropes while giving enough nod to the avant-garde to please a hyper-stimulated, discriminating audience.