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By John Norris @jonnynono

Like any indie band with a good deal of buzz and acclaim, Lower Dens spends much of its time on the road. That is after all where the bills are paid, particularly when you've got audiences the world over rightly eager to hear the sweeping, superb new album Nootropics live. Still, as the band tells Noisevox in this week's Face Time, they hope to approach the road in a slightly less relentless fashion than they did with their debut, 2010's Twin-Hand Movement, when the grind of the never-ending road led to guitarist temporarily leaving the band last year.

He's back, as you'll see in our interview with Adams, bassist Geoff Graham and singer and songwriter Jana Hunter, who delves once again into the ideas of technology-meets-human-nature at the heart of Nootropics -- an album which she says is "observational" but not judgmental, and one which, despite some fairly dire lyrical turns does hold out hope for the species. She also explains the triumvirate of songs that set the thesis for the record: "Alphabet", based on a Dadaist poem, the infectious, motorik "Brains", and the latest single, the synth-soaked ode to breeding, "Propagation."

You'll see the eerie, glow-in-the-dark new video for that song--depicting the band in what Jake Fogelnest on Sirius XMU called "ghosts in hazmat suits", and which I liken to beekeeper outfits--and hear about the good time they had shooting it in the woods upstate New York, even when licking tree bark. 

They're a band that likes to scatter when they're not together: Adams lives in New York; Hunter just returned to her native Texas; drummer Nate Nelson and keyboardist Carter Tanton call Baltimore home; and Graham will soon relocate to Berlin. So--we consider ourselves lucky that we got them in one place at one time, three-fifths of them anyway. An excellent band with something to say, both on record and in conversation. This week on Face Time, it's Lower Dens.