Kevin Bronson on November 4th, 2015

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Cancel the search party; we have found POP ETC. The Southern California-bred trio — formerly known as the Morning Benders, still known as brothers Christopher and Jonathan Chu and Julian Harmon — announced last week that their new album “Souvenir,” their second as POP ETC, would be out Jan. 29. To review: The Morning Benders started as Santa Monica native Christopher Chu’s project while in college at Cal; released the Beatlesque “Talking Through Tin Cans” in 2008; struggled with their sophomore album “Big Echo” two years later; changed their name in 2012 after finding that “Morning Benders” was derogatory in some cultures; and that summer released a self-titled album of not-so-memorable electro-pop.

To read between the lines of Chu’s quotes, the next step was quite a struggle; hence, the long wait. “We spent a long time making this album. Writing every day, recording hundreds of songs. There were moments when we weren’t sure if it would ever come together, but slowly and surely things started to come into focus. And in the end I’m glad we took our time, because we are incredibly proud of this album,” he says. “I’m not sure I know what this album is about exactly. At least not yet. But listening to it now I do think we captured some kind of feeling, some kind of snapshot of what the three of us have been going through these last few years. A ‘Souvenir’ to hold on to and remember those days.” So, to follow up the single they released last December, there was this summer’s new single “Bad Break,” which sounds like a disco-pop song that didn’t make the cut for a John Hughes movie. Hooray for the ’80s.

||| Stream: “Bad Break”