Inner Wave’s fifth full-length represents a massive leap for the California indie-rock outfit, honing their winning melodic instincts that have already wowed listeners and live audiences to zero in on the sharpest and richest version of their sound yet. At once broadly appealing and inarguably personal, See You When I Get Back recalls the lush psych-pop of Tame Impala, the Sea and Cake’s cool-handed post-rock, and the glowing synth fantasias of Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo. But for anyone who’s followed them thus far, these 12 tracks are unmistakably Inner Wave, all the while kicking the door open when it comes to new sonic possibilities for the group.

See You When I Get Back is Inner Wave’s Nettwerk debut and proper follow-up to 2021’s dreamy Apoptosis, a record that provided a wealth of new opportunities for the group after years of honing their sound in their hometown of Gardena. “We grew up playing house shows there and even shot our first music video there,” lead vocalist Pablo Sotelo explains. “Most of our childhood was spent skating around Gardena in between practices. It’s a town that’s been good to us.”

A sense of verve and energy courses through See You When I Get Back—partly owed to its origins as a collaborative affair, with guests including former drummer Luis Portillo, new sticksman recruit Felix Holton (Benee), and prolific drummer Eddie Burns (Clairo, Frank Ocean, Dominic Fike). “We've been friends with him for a long time, and he was very gracious to come in and take the music to another level,” he explains about Burns’ contributions.

The sound captured across this album was also heavily influenced by the band’s own observations made during their extensive tour schedule. “We started to notice that the most energy we’d get from the audience was from upbeat songs,” Trujillo points out. “We were really trying to capture that with this album, so we ended up going back to our roots—stuff we grew up on, like garage rock—while still adding our own flavor.”

That flavor is fully felt on the tastebuds in the form of “Far Away”’s sugary, Strokes-y rush and the sauntering fuzz-bombs that erupt across “If You Like”—as well as the gliding, gorgeous opening track and first single “Madre.” “That song is almost the flagship for what we wrote for this album, which is all about strong melodies and rhythms,” Narvaez explains. “We allowed for all these other melodies to kind of come up from under the vocal melody as well, which was what I was really into while writing the bass line for that one. It also speaks to our West Coast hip-hop background—it has a bounce that I don’t really hear other bands doing.”