Highlights

This Brooklyn duo had one of the best indie hits in recent memory with 2012’s “All of Me,” a beautifully sculpted nugget of sad-Eighties dance pop. On their second album, singer-guitarist Eric Emm and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Cohen sound like they burn prayer candles to the moany ghosts of OMD and ABC, but the pair’s songs take you places you don’t expect — from the Roy Orbison-ish country goth of “Invisible Ways” to the Afropop buoyancy of “Slipping Away.” “Nobody wants to be alone, sittin’ by themselves watching falling snow,” Emm intones on the doleful “If You Stay,” as chamomile jangle keeps him warm. Even at its most mournful, this is an album charged by bright ideas.