BROADCAST, a neo-psychedelic outfit from Birmingham (England, not Alabama), make music for incurable romantics and dreamers. They emerged essentially fully formed in 1996 with Work and Non-Work, a collection of singles originally released on the Duophonic label (once home to Stereolab), and released stateside by the venerable Chicagoans at Drag City. They were soon loosely associated with other British bands like Stereolab, Movietone, and Pram--bands that didn't quite mesh with the more popular "Brit Pop" movement, mainly because their music was more challenging and less radio-friendly. After a three-year hiatus, Broadcast have returned. Now that "Brit Pop" proper has been eschewed, maybe their time has come.

On their latest LP, The Sound Made by People, their sound is a nostalgic one, deftly tracing the biomorphic curves of the classic era of psychedelia. Psych music, when not in its more garagey or drug-addled incarnations, is the perfect genre for expressing the melancholy and poetic facets of love gone right or awry (usually awry). Broadcast's vocalist, Trish Keenan, sings longingly to and about her romantic interests, who always seem to be a few rainy streets away, or hanging out in a club as she sings her siren tune from outside. The rest of the band ably gives her pining vocals a jangly foundation of waltzy, reverb-soaked songs to loll around on. The drumming is lazy and simplistic but not infantile, and the bass and guitars create the distinctively hazy melodies pioneered by the original psychedelic bands.

What gives Broadcast their signature sound is the assemblage of scratchy samples, vintage keyboard sounds, a unique spectrum of bell-ringing noises, and other sounds of more mysterious origin that pepper their songs.

Seattle has enjoyed a windfall of great international touring bands lately, and Broadcast are no exception. At the Crocodile on Saturday, odds are they will prove that genre reinvention doesn't always have to be a tedious experience, and that as long as there are bands creating music about love and longing, there will always be people longing to curl up in that music.