London duo Ultimate Painting—Jack Cooper of Mazes and James Hoare of Veronica Falls—sharpen their wit but keep the grooves light and languid on their new album, Green Lanes. A lazily-strummed tale of karmic retribution, "(I’ve Got the) Sanctioned Blues" follows Cooper on the commute from hell: one rainy day, he manages to sneak onto a train (a crime he commits because swiping his ticket "takes too long"), only to be ejected by the conductor, whom he clocks before running out into the deluge.-=-=-=-

"You’ve really made me late, you know," Cooper sighs, as if his crimes were potholes or wayward squirrels. The song's latent cleverness, obfuscated ever so slightly by the duo's slacker-y harmonies, evokes the tongue-in-cheek country of Camper Van Beethoven as easily as it does Courtney Barnett's lo-fi snark, but it's Ultimate Paintaing's British humor that sets them apart. "(I’ve Got the) Sanctioned Blues" would make one hell of a pilot—and the theme song's already accounted for.