We've been listening to--and loving--WHY? for years, digging Yoni Wolf's dark, funny, trenchant, often self-lacerating ramblings, and increasingly, his lovely melodies, as on 2009's gorgeous "This Blackest Purse", which the band peformed on a memorable episode of Noisemakers on Noisevox. But it wasn't until recently, specifically on the title track to the new EP Sod in the Seed that we realised who Wolf's smart, pinched rap flow truly recalls: Aziz Ansari.

Close your eyes, imagine you don't know who you're hearing, and see if you can't hear the awesome Aziz in Yoni's delivery, as he barrels through lyrics about western world haves and have-nots. "I make decent cash, I'm a minor star..." he begins the four-minute wordstream that includes, in no particular order, references to Sanka, the CIA, Whole Foods, slumlords, getting one's "lance waxed", needle exchange trucks, and much much more, all fascinating stuff, and punctuated by a sweetly sung, glockenspiel-accented hook: "I'll never shirk this first-world curse". 

"Sod in the Seed" alone is worth the price of admission to this six-song EP, but there's more to recommend it. The most "rap" track is "Shag Carpet", on which talks of confession and atonement, and imagines a girl that looks like his ex, "or like Zooey Deschanel". On the melodic "The Plan" he sings, "Leave it to the whims of your unborn little one." And two tracks are more sketches than songs: the minute-long "Probably Cause" recalls getting stopped by a highway patrolman and pleading his case, while in "Twenty Seven", Wolf declares "There is real peace in the regular order of my geometry." 

And there is real fascination in the way Yoni Wolf's mind and artistry works. Sod in the Seed is a prelude to a full 13-track WHY? album, Mumps, due October 9th. Until then, even a little bit of this band is a really good thing.