Every week at PopCrush, we’re putting the spotlight on one up-and-coming act you need to know about. Why? So you can get on board early before everyone else and their mother jumps on the bandwagon…and so you can be that one friend in the group who’s always like, “Um, actually, I prefer their earlier work.”

Reinventing the wheel is a tall task; reinventing the EP-release is as easy as melting down a pair of bear-shaped candles, setting footage of the wax-carnage to the sound of your newest track and posting the finished product to YouTube.

Minnesota-based indie-pop group Whosah, whose sophomore EP Work makes its streaming debut below, have unveiled their latest four-track project a little bit unusually. Rather than defer to the obligatory lyric video-routine — which the five-man outfit told PopCrush they see as distracting — they've unrolled still frames that feature only a handful of moving parts that offer each track subtle context ("Perhaps We Were," the aforementioned candle-destroying setup, speaks to a relationship's dissolution and new life transitions).

The idea, they said, developed from a love of Harry Potter portraits and Passion Pit's awakened still-life clips.

"We're always trying to do something new, always asking, 'Why do people do what they do?'" they told PopCrush. "'Ghost Town' we shot in an empty corporate hallway to evoke some of the everyday workplace imagery mixed with the dreamlike figures streaming through it. 'Forget About It' focuses on the pointless repetition of always trying to get to the next level, get on top, through the band running up the same ladder for three-and-a-half minutes."

In a more collective sense, Work's themes center on self-discovery and identity, and the mix of synth-pop and live instruments signals a clear evolution from 2013's It's Not Just Me In Here, they said.

"We really wanted our second EP to bring us to a deeper, more personal place thematically than anything we'd done before," they explained. "We knew that some of our soundscapes and tones needed to mature from our past record to help support those themes."

Kailey Erdahl
Kailey Erdahl
loading...

Sometimes light and airy — elsewhere, a little bit heavier, Work succeeds in offering varied takes on a cohesive story, a mission executed in part by producer and previous PopCrush feature Chase Coy.

"From the moment we met, he believed in us and our music, and had enough respect for what we were doing to challenge us to be better than we were," the group said. "He was instrumental also in just helping us shape our sound and continue working until we had something we were proud of every moment."

Take a listen to the PopCrush premiere of Work above, pre-order the EP on iTunes (it's available for purchase on March 11) and check out Whosah's website to see when you can catch them live.

Who would you like to see featured in PopCrush Presents next? Tweet us at @popcrush with your recommendations using #PopCrushPresents!

Look back at our favorite new artists of 2015:

More From PopCrush