Kevin Bronson on December 1st, 2017

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An album, two EPs and a handful of singles later, L.A. art-punks Sego continue to bend both genre and mind. Theirs is very physical music — guitar scribbles that scratch, bass that lands in the midsection, choruses that arrive with hair-raising surprise — yet it’s Spencer Petersen’s lyrical head-slapping that leaves a mark. Wry and biting, it’s stream-of-conscience that from the beginning has elevated Sego beyond warehouse-party moshpit fare.

And so it is with “Sucker/Saint,” the second single Sego have released this year and another that portends greater things for 2018. It’s a song about the disconnect between Petersen’s religious upbringing in Utah and his life in Los Angeles — “the pious and profane.” “I’m in it / but not of it / I’m high but not above it,” he says, accentuating the juxtaposition.

The single follows September’s release of “Whatever Forever,” which gave Petersen and co-conspirator Thomas Carroll some deserved national notice. Did we mention we’re looking forward to 2018?

||| Watch: The video for “Sucker/Saint”

||| Also: Watch the video for “Whatever Forever”

||| Previously: “Whatever Forever,” live at the Troubadour, “Obscene Dream,” “Micky Macali,” “The Fringe” “20 Years Tall”

||| Live: Sego plays tonight at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs.