Suburbia and the salad days of the early internet are deeply intertwined in the minds of countless twenty and thirty somethings—their childhoods dotted with ice cream truck jingles and the whirring sounds of overheating desktop computers. Central to the pull of the suburbs and the internet are promises of social progress and freedom, but increasingly, both have revealed an underbelly of absurd depravity. From cost-of-living crises to fascist tech overlords, those promises have quickly evaporated—as have the hopes of entire generations. So you drive through neighborhoods you can’t afford and watch cringe YouTube videos from 2008 just to feel something, microdosing the cheerful innocence of adolescence. But pretty soon after, you’re jolted from this mirage, sent back to a world of nonsensical cruelty, and gaslit by a broader society that insists everything is fine.

“I look out at the world and it looks back to me / Staring at me sideways,” Omar Akrouche sings on the self-titled third album from Worthitpurchase, perfectly summing up this jarring experience. With this LP, the Los Angeles duo chronicles the surreal feeling of incongruence towards one’s surroundings, filtered through ambiguous yet naturalistic vignettes and electronic indie-rock informed by their own early-internet nostalgia. Marked by a vivid stream of consciousness, tactile guitars, eccentric breakbeats and samples, and touching vocal harmonies, Worthitpurchase is neither fearful, nor pessimistic—instead mining these weird times for the beauty that remains. Multi-instrumentalists, songwriters, and producers Omar Akrouche and Nicole Rowe tap into a deep well of love for and trust in each other and their collaborators, as well as artistic generosity—each confounding electronic bloop and detailed memory transformed into something totally new and subtly profound.

Worthitpurchase began in 2019 in San Francisco as a vehicle for Akrouche and Rowe to finish each other’s songs. The duo were staff engineers at beloved Bay Area recording studio, Tiny Telephone, where an eclectic array of gear provided the perfect conditions for their first two records to form through nocturnal sessions fueled by moments of curiosity, improvisation and spontaneity. They still operate in a similarly collaborative, hodgepodge spirit—but this is the first time they’ve consciously curated a collection of songs over several years. It's also their first record since expanding Worthitpurchase into a live act, whose ever-evolving, one-off shows have featured as many as six players. They also had plenty of time to satisfy their cravings for sonic trickery—disguising instruments as other instruments, amusing each other with weird techniques, sounds, and equipment, and most of all, striving to make listeners think their headphones are broken when a Worthitpurchase song comes on.

Tracks like “Eye” epitomize their daring playfulness, where quaint banjo, programmed drums, whooshing Digitone effects, and heavily processed, hard-as-fuck guitar solos meet. From the sitar-laden dream pop of “Nokia Forever” and the ambient trip-hop of “Heaven on Earth” to the scrappy lo-fi balladry of “Sideways,” Worthitpurchase cultivates unique sonic universes, but not at the expense of timeless pop songwriting. Citing influences like the offbeat ‘90s rock of Beck and the icy electronics of Lali Puna, Worthitpurchase’s ambient-electro guitar-pop, or self-described “cyber-folk,” channels a very specific era of digital nostalgia. Not only is the record peppered with internet samples, like a Twitter video run through a 1960s Echoplex, but they also imagine the melancholic breakbeat-rock of songs like “Something New” as a random ‘90s track that the 2010s YouTube algorithm would’ve fed you.

Suburban surrealism, new perspectives on old memories, and attempts to relate to complex places are central motifs on this LP. “Big Canada” is about Rowe’s recent visit to her hometown, which transformed into an unrecognizable tourist trap and made her feel like a stranger, and “Ancient Suburb” is a vision of idyllic Midwestern domesticity. “Lakeshore” is another product of wistful imagination—this time, a portal into the angsty lore of American summer camp—while “Something New” likens L.A. to a “dodecahedron,” an apt summation of the bewildering yet awe-inspiring behemoth. 

These days, it’s nearly impossible to confront adulthood without also confronting the illusion of the American dream. “I think a lot of my lyrics have to do with ‘why is being an adult this way?’ and ‘we were promised flying cars, but it’s not actually like that,’” Rowe says. “Everybody’s just suffering together, and we’re not really acknowledging it.” But what Worthitpurchase also posits with their self-titled album is that every fleeting moment still drips with so much poetry and bliss, or as the silly meme adage goes: “There are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see.” Metropolises and the internet continue to make less sense, but both still gasp with life, and Worthitpurchase continues to scavenge for meaningful sources of serotonin. And lucky for listeners, their music—teeming with otherworldly electronic transmissions, twinkly, slightly out-of-tune guitar, and amusing, heart-on-sleeve epigrams—doesn’t require any proverbial slop sorting. It’s pure ecstasy. It’s unadulterated Californian beauty. It’s two friends wanting more. It’s Worthitpurchase.