Awards is a new group consisting of Backburner emcee Thesis Sahib from London, Ontario, and Cocktail Pueblo producer Funken, from Tour, France. The two met when Sahib traveled to France as part of his other job as a visual artist, and eventually they formed the group now known as Awards. They now present their debut album, Warm Computers.

If your only exposure to Thesis Sahib is from his work as part of the Backburner crew, you might be a little surprised at how different Warm Computers sounds. In working with Funken, they’ve both found a unique meeting point that brings together a little bit of hip hop but then pushes further into this new wave-disco-art-punk territory. Funken has a great feel for building pop-friendly tracks around vintage keyboards and synthesizers, drawing heavily upon acts like Devo and Gary Numan, especially towards the first half of the album, then turning a little more towards New Order as you get to the end of the album. On Sahib’s side, he’s making a conscious effort to space out his words and give more melody to his delivery, to make his words more economic and make them land with more weight. Over the course of the album, he moves between an absurdist sense of humor, worries about technology and society, and personal tales. As he’s doing this, he’s balancing his delivery between a new wave-ish talk singing delivery, straight up rapping, and straight up pop singing. It all works because Sahib went all in on this project. It’s a different style than fans might be used to, but when the artist commits fully to the project and puts a lot of themselves into it, it’s much easier to come around as a listener. So while you might initially think that songs that open the album like “Dinosaur Bones” and “Dog or Cat” have silly titles and seem a little goofy on first listen, a closer inspection will reveal that these phrases are actually inroads to talking about much more serious material. And that’s ultimately what makes Warm Computers such a compelling listen. At first it seems like a simple, fun pop record, but it slowly reveals itself to be so much more.

Awards might be an unlikely pairing, but the work between Thesis Sahib and Funken produced some music that neither one would have made on their own. It’s fun and easy to listen to, but it’s also so smartly and thoughtfully put together by the two artists that you’ll discover something new each time you listen to it.