In the early 2000s, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs burst onto the indie/alternative/punk/art garage rock scene with its debut album, Fever to Tell. The New York trio’s debut featured a unique sound that it continued to rely on in its sophomore effort, Show Your Bones.

The songs on both albums are a combination of distorted, grungy guitar riffs and kinetic drums that support the sporadic and energetic ravings of the lead singer Karen O. The end result is a mesh of pure energy blowing out of the speakers, sometimes sounding like pure static.

It is natural to expect more of this dirty, grungy feel from its latest album, It’s Blitz! But, oddly enough, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs instead greet the listener with clean, calm and introspective tracks. Vulnerable, soothing and danceable are not common adjectives to describe the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but It’s Blitz! fits this bill quite nicely.

The album was produced by Nick Launey – producer of the band’s EP, Is Is — and David Sitek, more commonly known as the lead singer of TV on the Radio. The duo provide the band with atypical focus, rather than the fuzzy and almost muddled sound of the garage-band aesthetic that characterized the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ previous work.

The most immediately noticeable departure from the band’s usual auditory palette is its predominantly electronic sound. On previous albums, Nick Zinner’s guitar is the main instrument, but here, Zinner’s guitar becomes background to Blitz’s synth-based sound. “Zero” and “Heads Will Roll” are the best examples on the album of the new pop-disco sound. However, Karen O’s typical playful charisma is still present in these tracks, with such lines as “Off with your head / Dance ’til you’re dead / Heads will roll / On the floor.”

With the track “Soft Shock,” the band suddenly changes gear, delivering the more introspective and calm feel that dominates most of this album. Karen O’s usual shrieks and moans are few and far between, replaced instead with the gentle crooning reminiscent of the band’s most well-known single, “Maps.” On a similar note, “Hysteric” expresses sentimentality never before captured in any Yeah Yeah Yeahs song.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs succeed in venturing off their own beaten path, but they do so without abandoning everything that made the band so good. It’s Blitz! is a testament to their previous strengths, as well as to the band’s future potential to further diversify its sound into such uncharted realms as disco-dance punk rock.