Now Now Sleepyhead

Now Now Sleepyhead’s … For Science is a record that’d make MythBusters host Adam Savage proud: It’s geeky, it has popular appeal, and it seems to enjoy blowing stuff up in the name of skepticism. Featuring former Flee the Seen drummer Aaron Crawford alongside Phil Park and Brian McCourt of Lawrence act Davan, this three-piece band crafts emo-pop songs but hurls them into a turbulent, proggy head space. The record fittingly begins with a calculated experiment that ends in explosion: “What’s a Bitca” winds up a bare synth for a minute before revealing itself as a four-chord, verse-chorus, straight-to-radio rave. The dense production begs to be plucked for mass distribution, and the refrain is MTV-ready emo: You’re a bitch/That’s OK with me/I understand your heart is black. These songs tend to flirt with melody and then go haywire, drifting into a genealogy of popular influence ranging from Black Sabbath to They Might Be Giants to Taking Back Sunday. The common denominator is Crawford’s fast, heavy drumming, which propels the songs through a roller coaster of structure, mood, volume and style — mad science.