Kevin Bronson on May 26th, 2011

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To hear the jangling swell of Fonda’s new song “Better Days,” you’d think another in the flood of this era’s shoegazing dreampop bands was announcing its arrival. Fact is, the Los Angeles quintet was mixing its fuzzy, Britpop-inspired concoctions around the time of the Y2K scare (remember that?), coaxing bittersweet gems out of an old Farfisa organ, boy-girl vocals and a thin frosting of feedback. What happened? Life intervened. Principals Dave Klotz and Emily Cook, abetted by guitarist/producer David Newton (once of British rockers the Mighty Lemon Drops) made three albums and an EP between 1998 and 2003, and wrote the theme song for the 2001 movie “Spy Kids.” Klotz and Cook had met a few years earlier when she moved to L.A. from her native England; they eventually married and saw their respective careers take off, Cook as a screenwriter (“Gnomeo and Juliet,” “Ratatouille”) and Klotz as a music editor (currently for the TV show “Glee”). So after their strongest release, 2003’s “Catching Up to the Future,” Fonda was put on hold. Now, recording, as the couple says, around their young son Henry’s nap schedule, they’ve finished the “Better Days” EP (out June 6). And it sounds just like the title.

||| Download: “Better Days”

||| Also: Stream the whole EP on Soundcloud.

||| Also: Check out some vintage Fonda tracks, “The Sun Keeps Shining on Me” (2001), “I Will Remember You” (2003) and “The Invisible Girl (1999).