The House Flies are a post-punk four-piece from Moline, Illinois, drawing on goth rock, shoegaze, grunge, as well as their Midwestern roots. On November 6 they return with their second album, Lions and Ore, the first LP made by the current lineup of Alex Riggen, Burnie Eckhardt, Ozzie Woods and Nick Pompou. Its second single, "Lost Literature," arrived on October 2 together with an official video.

"Lost Literature" is built in layers. At the bottom lie dark, murky textures, and it's hard to tell what they are: synths or something organic. They sound old, almost worn, which gives the track a nostalgic character, along with a slow, dragging, anxious atmosphere. On top of that runs a classic post-punk groove, but it's played in a really cool way and makes a beautiful contrast with the textures. The third layer is the vocal: a catchy melodic line, delivered with raw emotion.

The first band that came to mind was The Cure. Not as a reference, but more as a sonic image, the kind of association that appears when certain synth timbres unmistakably tie a sound to a particular era. Here, both the textures and the post-punk sound itself take you back in time, and so, perhaps, does a certain resemblance to Robert Smith in the vocal timbre and manner. It doesn't work on a postmodern level, where you read it as a direct nod. It reads more like Proust's madeleine, carrying you back there.

The song has the cold, hard edge people love post-punk for: the gloom, the chill, a feeling not unlike the brutalist architecture of Eastern Europe. And yet it is also deeply melodic and atmospheric, and superbly played, recorded and mixed. That's why it's easy to imagine it playing in the background at a party, or even in a glossy, expensive commercial, the way Molchat Doma's music ended up in an ad for Christian Dior.

Watch the official video with hand-built marionettes for "Lost Literature" below.