ne of last year's surprise highlights was The Velvet Underground & Rowan, the debut album by the wacky, hyperliterate London duo Worldpeace DMT. That irreverent album title summed up their approach to their references: Leo Fincham and Rowan Miles – also of the Femcels – buttressed nods to Fleetwood Mac and the Beach Boys with a palette straight out of NME circa 2011. If it isn't a coup to make the sound of Grouplove and Darwin Deez sound cool and urbane in 2025, I don't know what is.

This year, Worldpeace DMT have changed tack, perhaps in response to suggestions that they're at the forefront of an emergent genre called "laptop twee". The duo's August mixtape Flowers Powers mostly eschewed plunderphonics and heavy sampling in favour of live instrumentation that ran the gamut from Spiritualized to outlaw country; Stick Around for Tea, their second album, brings back a shade of the goofy, Sung Tongs-esque sound design that made their debut such a joy, while pulling Fincham and Miles' songwriting to the fore.

Stick Around for Tea seems, loosely, to be a concept album about childhood. The inherent whimsy of the Worldpeace DMT project suits these songs, which wring dry humour from lyrics about spiders, tigers and anthropomorphised guitars. Fincham and Miles sing in a self-consciously childish way that belies their taut musicality: a lush, almost Van Dyke Parks jauntiness on Munich Gyaru, for example, or a knack for bulletproof pop structure on the title track. The result is the kind of devastatingly contemporary record that even arch classicists couldn't possibly turn up their noses at.