The skilled U.K. genre-mashers Glass Animals bring synth pop, indie, R&B, and hip-hop together in innovative and inviting ways. On 2014’s ZABA, Dave Bayley’s androgynous falsetto and surreal lyrics fit perfectly with the album’s rippling guitars and aquatic synths, resulting in alien yet alluring tracks like the certified-platinum single “Gooey.”

Glass Animals revealed new dimensions to their music, as well as Bayley’s songwriting, on the artful character sketches of 2016’s Mercury Prize-nominated How to Be a Human Being. They took a more personal approach on 2020’s abstractly autobiographical Dreamland, mixing pop culture allusions from Bayley’s ’90s childhood into futuristic-sounding songs like the worldwide hit “Heat Waves.” Glass Animals responded to this success — which included a Grammy nomination — with the imaginative expressions of our need to connect on 2024’s I Love You So F***ing Much.

At the beginning of the third album from London band Glass Animals, frontman Dave Bayley asks himself a series of questions about fundamental issues: identity, memory, love, friendship, the person you have been and the person you want to be. How do you answer so many questions that cut to the heart of who you are? Well, Bayley sings in the very last line, “You go make an album and call it Dreamland.”