“We can change our minds / decide to tell them everything,” sings Film School front man Greg Bertens on “Heart Full of Pentagons,” the band’s first single from Fission, their fourth full-length release. Film School has certainly reserved the right to change their minds. Instead of self-releasing Fission as they’d planned, the band made a last minute decision to sign to Hi-Speed Soul Records, who will release the record on August 31, 2010.

“Heart Full of Pentagons” also marks a bit of a departure for the band. Bassist Lorelei Plotczyk’s vocals begin the song, which adds an uncharacteristically feminine touch for Film School and puts it squarely in Postal Service territory from the first note. But it’s the dreamy keyboard melody that sets “Heart Full of Pentagons” apart from the band’s earlier, more distorted offerings.

The band doesn’t remain in the light and fluffy upper registers for long, however; a wall of reverb-laden guitar soon descends, bringing the song back to more recognizable shoegaze roots. If you cut it, “Heart Full of Pentagons” bleeds pure ’80s, but it’s the interplay between the light electro-pop and the heavier guitar that makes the song a legitimate offspring, rather than a hackneyed imitator.

Brooklyn foursome Restless People may be a relatively new act on listeners’ radars–their eponymous debut LP won’t be released until September 14th by IAMSOUND–but their sound will be familiar to those who have kept up with recent releases by Caribou, Deastro, and Delorean. Restless People‘s eight songs borrow a hard edge from 1990s house music as well as a heaping helping of the pan-global, post-everything mélange of the aforementioned groups, an auditory approach that nods in many directions while performing the sleight of hand of not sounding too much like any of its inspirations.

The forthcoming record kicks off with “Days of Our Lives,” a thunderous, drum machine driven single whose percussive elements are as piercing as the synthesized air horn which occasionally makes its presence known. Repetition is the central theme at play throughout the song: all of its lyrics are refrains, vocal samples stutter out with insistence, keyboards thump out patterened melodies, and an angry faux snare hammers out in a frantic Morse code. Restless People’s music is an unapologetic bash–as in both the noun and the verb–and this will assuredly make it unpalatable for some listeners. However, for those willing to engage in the noisy delirium there is an intense energy to be enjoyed throughout “Days of Our Lives,” a song which may prove to be a template for a lot of the music we’ll be hearing over the next few years.

Stockholm, Sweden duo Pallers describe their music as “dance music for the lazy,” and we’re hard pressed to come up a more apt encapsulation of their sound. Filtering Brotherhood-era New Order jams through a post-shoegazer lens, Pallers creates dreamy, electronic music with a pulse. Without resorting to piling on sonic layers, the pair crafts hazy soundscapes which are suddenly pierced by a drum machine or guitar riff, like ships suddenly appearing on a foggy horizon. Their latest effort is a two-track single, The Kiss, which was released on May 25th by their current home, the erstwhile Labrador Records imprint.

“The Kiss” spends most of its five and a half minute run time patiently cultivating a reverie of synth washes and digitally delayed notes, the backbone of which is a gentle but persistent arp line. Overlayed on this slow tide are ponderous vocals (“If it wasn’t a kiss / then I don’t know what it was”) and the glacial build up of drum machine tracks. The latter hit critical mass alongside more propulsive vocal and instrumental melodies about three minutes in, suddenly elevating the implied tempo closer to something countrymen The Sound of Arrows would rock. This duality helps lend a grace and flowing symmetry to “The Kiss,” a song which wins the listener over not with a rush and a push but rather by beguiling degrees.

In a month when the air is filled with the World Cup’s internationalism, it seems fitting to feature this new single by Thieves Like Us, an electronic-pop trio whose backstory knows no borders. Comprised of two Swedes and an American who met at a picnic in Berlin in 2002, the band has spent time calling Germany, France, and Italy home (and their Myspace page, if it’s to be trusted, claims they are now taking up residence in Mexico’s Distrito Federal).

On July 6th, the group will follow up their 2008 debut LP, Play Music, with a ten track sophomore effort entitled Again and Again. Both records have been released by underground favorite Slumberland Records, renowned more for jangly indie-pop tunes than Thieves Like Us’ blend of drum machines and romantically dark synthesizers. The new album has its share of dancefloor ready cuts, but one of the more interesting numbers is the closing ballad, “Forget Me Not.”

Sounding like a cross between one of In Ghost Colours‘ more mellow sides and the meditative moments in Morgan Geist or Nicolas Makelberge‘s catalogs, “Forget Me Not” weaves a brokenhearted tale of lost love over a burble of synthesizers and a slinky bassline. Andy Grier’s vocals are given the gentle halo of a multi-tracked recording process, allowing him to perform simple, unforced self-harmonies. Pontus Berghe’s percussion work is a smart mixture of drum machine tracks which intensify slowly as the song unfolds and live instrumentation, underscoring the song’s balance of the synthesized and the organic. To that end, “Forget Me Not” is a bit of electronic music for the unconverted–an uncomplicated but thoroughly charming bit of songwriting.