Knowing that Elton John likes your music must be a strange feeling, but for rising outfit Stats, it’s a familiar one. Their 10-track second album, Powys 1999, is a follow-up to their 2019 debut, Other People’s Lives, and takes a personal look at frontman Ed Seed’s upbringing. “Growing up I felt like I didn’t fit in or belong where I was born and raised,” he explains, talking about the album’s titular Welsh town of Powys. “I felt somehow fake in Powys as a born incomer, un-local, neither Welsh nor English. But by looking at the landscape I started to realise the construction and extraction behind it, and the myth of its naturalness.” While there is a natural nostalgia to the album, it feels futuristic in terms of both lyrics and music. Standout tracks like ‘Naturalise Me’ and ‘Old Flames’ explore their distinctively swaggering, effortless blend of funk, electronic music and straight-up pop. -Dan Peeke