There’s nothing middle-of-the-road about Mamalarky. These indie-rock shapeshifters - formed in Austin but now scattered across Los Angeles, Atlanta, and back again - thrive in the imperceptible, that limbo of genre and geography where anything can happen. And on Hex Key, their third album and first for Epitaph, they turn that freedom into a playground of tangled hooks, swirling psych, and wiry guitar work that defies expectations and norms.

Hex Key is a document of total commitment, the sound of four friends - guitarist and vocalist Livvy Bennett, keyboardist Michael Hunter, bassist Noor Khan, and drummer Dylan Hill - holed up in a cramped LA living room, writing songs between the whir of ice cream trucks and the howls of stray cats. No outside producers, no hired guns. Just focused chaos and a deep musical trust that’s been growing since the band formed in 2016.

Where their last LP, Pocket Fantasy, wandered freely, Hex Key drills down. Songs like “#1 Best Of All Time” are hyper-hooky sugar rushes, delivered with a wink and a drum performance tracked while Hill battled a bout of poison ivy. “Anhedonia” layers dream-pop haze over stabbing grunge guitars, and “Nothing Lasts Forever” finds a slinky, low-key groove that propels forward with urgency.

But this isn’t just technical wizardry for its own sake. Hex Key brims with emotional duality - joyful hooks laced with existential dread, self-doubt riding shotgun to determination. “Feels So Wrong,” the first song written for the record, was born out of instability; Bennett had just moved cross-country, quit her job, and was delivering pizzas while writing. “I still didn’t have it all figured out,” she says. “So I wrote songs as a way of telling myself what I needed to hear.”

Every song feels like a distinct world, and that’s intentional. “The worst thing you can say about a Mamalarky song is ‘This sounds like another one of yours,’” says Khan. It’s a principle that pays off in Hex Key's prismatic scope, with styles colliding and morphing mid-track, but never losing the thread. Hex Key isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about scrambling uphill together, then stopping to take in the view.