"Don't let the daylight fool you that you're not real," sings Lucy Mercer, opening the title cut from her band's second album with a mousy a capella. In those short seconds, the drummer and one of three vocalists in Stealing Sheep personifies a metaphor telling of the Liverpool trio. Here's a band that can give the simplest of sounds—such as a lone voice reciting innocent riddles—damn near psychedelic properties. Then, as if to drive the point home, "Not Real" jumps right into its peculiar arrangement of herky-jerky drums, warbly slide guitar, and a bassline with plenty of whimsical synth-pop coursing through its DNA. It's not disorienting so much as it's disarming, but throughout the song, you're really never too far from either pole.-=-=-=-

For all of their idiosyncrasies, Stealing Sheep craft breezy, magnetic songs. The lyrics are bubblegum, practically demanding a sing-along whether you understand every curious line or not. And they're only made more hummable: Each dulcet harmony the trio coos in unison adds a candied memory of 1960s girl groups to the prismatic instrumentation underneath. As "Not Real" continues to blend its art-school inventiveness with AM radio nuggets, Mercer & Co. seem to be telling us, "Don't let the strangeness fool you that we're not pop."