Broken Social Scene never forget their roots. The Canadian supergroup began as an instrumental band but soon turned to a career of nontraditional lyrics, indie rock hooks, and emotional build-ups, finding a way to balance the abstract with the straightforward. “Skyline,”  the third single off their forthcoming album Hug of Thunder, is a return to form, where aimless roaming sounds remarkably intimate.

Here the band packs its freeform structure with emotional weight, initially trying to balance the lack of a strong hook by overdoing reverb-laden production. As the song carries on, the band begins stitching small sounds into it: a descending keyboard part, Amy Millan’s soft harmonies, a looping guitar note. The sole lyric (“Skyline waits for the world/Skyline waits for the fall/But you shouldn’t have come all/Because I know/You’re never gonna be that way”) teeters between melancholic regret and faint optimism, as quintessentially Broken Social Scene as it gets. By the time it forms a grand, panoramic climax, horns bellowing beneath Kevin Drew’s voice, the song solidifies itself as a welcome, familiar feeling, just one unnecessarily delivered through an over-produced lens.