With their baby fat gone, Empire of the Sun are both more impressive and less distinctive they've made the confusing half-leap from indie-gone-mainstream (Luke Steele, Empire of the Sun's lead singer, started out in the indie-rock band Sleepy Jackson) to not-quite pop stars, and Ice On the Dune feels middling as a result.

(Party music that translates to outdoor festival audiences worldwide is a demanding beast.) Ice On The Dune, their five-years-in-the-making follow up, was written and recorded while running this endless arena-date treadmill, and you can instantly hear that music's homemade quirks have burned off like cellulite. Their first album did its job, and now they are legitimately famous: They've have been touring internationally more or less nonstop since its release. EOTS were theatrical weirdos, for sure, but it seemed conceivable you might be able to walk up to them at a party and ask them, 'What's with the hat?'. The big anthems were set off by odd grace notes like the ambient Eno-like 'The World', the dark 'Swordfish Hotkiss Night', or the George Michael/Prince mindmeld 'Breakdown'. Empire's Walking on a Dream was pop made by people fully intending to be famous, but part of its appeal was how endearingly homemade it felt. 'Walking on a Dream', their big hit, was so beguiling that Jay-Z flew them in from Perth to record for The Blueprint 3- the most unlikely, out-of-context guest spot on a Jay-Z album since Lenny Kravitz on The Blueprint 2.

When Empire of the Sun emerged in 2008, they were fascinating, even at a glance: Wearing costumes that evoked community-theater Flash Gordon, or perhaps the leaping wing-people from the NES version of Contra, they made cheery, brightly pumping synth music that suggested similar pop-culture carbon dating.

Empire of the sun awakening