"We're happy in pieces/Happy in bits," sing Suzi Horn and Tobin Prinz of the Portsmouth, England duo Prinzhorn Dance School. They might be talking about their emotions; they're definitely describing their music. Prinzhorn's second album is all about pieces and bits – fragments of rhythm and melody, a bassline chunk here, a snare drum shard there – arranged and rearranged like a jigsaw puzzle. When the pieces slot together, the result is ingeniously minimalist art-pop: "The Flora and Fauna of Britain in Bloom" combines Horn's thrumming bass, Prinz's kickdrum, a sinisterly pealing guitar, and a mordantly monotone vocal into something spooky, transfixing, and (intentionally or not) hilarious. Clay Class is nearly an indie classic. All that's missing are tunes—not quite enough of those bits.

Listen to "Happy In Bits":

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• Photos: Random Notes

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”