On its previous albums, Timber Timbre impressively created an immediately identifiable, inimitable sonic environment. Tailoring an introspective, moody and melancholy brew of blues and folk, the band has attracted critical acclaim for its distinctive sound.

Sincerely, Future Pollution, Timber Timbre’s new album and the followup to its 2014 Polaris Music Prize shortlisted Hot Dreams, delves deeper into those darker sounds. Helmed by the creative leadership of Taylor Kirk, Sincerely, Future Pollution also explores newer sounds, and this can be attributed in part to the group’s slightly different songwriting process on this project.

Kirk and bandmates Mathieu Charbonneau, Simon Trottier and drummer Oliver Fairfield arranged songs in Montreal, before taking off to a Paris chateau to finish off the tracks, experimenting beyond their usual boundaries. So while songs like “Velvet Gloves & Spit” and “Sewer Blues” mine familiar Timber Timbre territory of reverb-laden guitars and spooky synths — replete with Kirk’s gravelly croon — there are departures. “Grifting,” for example, channels a funk-influenced style reminiscent of David Bowie’s “Fame.”

“My solitary sketching was left more rudimentary than in the past,” said Kirk in a statement discussing the album’s genesis.

“The prior records, I’d decided what they were going to sound like. I’d imagined the arrangements when the songs were sketched. Down to anomalous sounds. There was a vision that was manageable somehow. This album was much less focused that way, but far more complex. It was complicated and challenging to the end, every detail seeming somehow counterintuitive.”

Timber Timbre’s Sincerely, Future Pollution is released on April 7. You can pre-order the album here.