Listening to Peter Wolf Crier is like watching sunlight stream through a smudged prism; you think you know where these beautiful melodies are going to end up, but before you know it there are rainbows on the floor and shadows covering your face.

There has never been a question about frontman Peter Pisano's ability to write a memorable hook or to send his emotive voice soaring skyward. What has made Peter Wolf Crier, his partnership with drummer Brian Moen, so compelling is that Pisano will go to great lengths to obscure his obvious talent for crafting pop music and lead the listener into creaky hallways and dingy basements. At times, this has been a source of frustration for fans—2011's Garden of Arms and especially the band's live shows from that era steered a little too far into the mud, abandoning the listener in stoney, aimless territory—but it has also lent them an aura of mystique. Where did they go? Will we hear from them again? And can Pisano and Moen recapture the spark that made their grimy folk-pop debut, Inter-Be, so exciting?

Thankfully, the answer to that last question turns out to be that yes, yes they can. And they do so tremendously on their third album, Plum Slump, which is out this week. Right out of the gate, Pisano throws down the gauntlet: "Record players are all the rage / everybody's gotta buy one to play my CD / I'm broken, if you don't know," he sing-scoffs on the opening track, "Big Fads." It is at once soul-baring and sarcastic, a confrontation of his own desire for coolness and an admission that none of this really matters. And after that, Pisano sounds free: free to wander off into the beauty of a pristine melody; free to bury his songs deep in the sand and dig them out again; free to kick things over to Moen for a chugging train-track beat before ducking to the forefront to sing again.

On "We Became Kids Again," you can practically see Pisano and Moen ambling up to the attic to dust off their old toys, and that achy nostalgic feeling crops up again and again. "Monight" reminisces about messy Saturday night mistakes and nights spent cruising around looking for trouble, while the album's standout single, "Don't Leave," pleads with a lover to remember, "When we were young, we'd hold our breaths underwater for as long as it took to hear our hearts pound." You can't go home again, but Peter Wolf Crier are content to hover in this lovelorn space between the memories of past and the demands of the present day.

This is heartbeat music, at once romantic and coolly distant. It's perfect for the soon-to-be autumn season, and will sound even crisper and more delicate once the leaves begin to fall. Plum Slump marks the welcome return of Peter Wolf Crier, and it's one of my favorite new albums of the year.