People Under the Stairs have been mainstays on the L.A. scene since the mid ‘90s, and they aren’t about to get stale or go away anytime soon. The duo of Thes One and Double K have just released their eighth full length album, and Highlighter sounds as fresh and exciting as anything they’ve done.

PUTS have created a sound that has a throwback party vibe, but they update it with plenty of obscure samples, really tight production, and live instrumentation. Highlighter is not a step in a different direction, but a continued improvement on a formula that has grown slowly and subtly over PUTS’s career. Sometimes you don’t need a group to completely reinvent themselves to stay interesting. Some groups are able to make such genuinely honest and fun music that it doesn’t matter if they don’t markedly change their sound, and People Under The Stairs is such a group. If you were to casually listen to a few songs from throughout their career, your reaction would most likely be along the lines of, “This is fun. I like it.” If you listen closely, though, you’ll find that there are all sorts of clever and subtle touches to their songs that reward careful listens. You might recognize a few obvious samples and think you’ve got their number, but rest assured that you can spend a lot of time uncovering all the hidden gems within their production. I know I’ve spent a lot of time trying to identify samples I thought I knew, only to come up short. Then we you think you at least have their sound pinned down, they’ll bring some psychedelic garage sounds, like the fuzzed out guitar and organ on “The Time Bandit,” or the British Invasion sounds of “Foolish People,” which are mixed with classic break bets nicely. “Electric Tookie” mixes in some dub/reggae elements, and “Dewrit!” brings in some Brazilian funk. Then you have the straight up James-Brown-Live-at-the-Apollo style of “Cookie’s Theme.”

All of this is happening while Thes One and Double K trade lines that are full of absurd humor and biting social commentary. They aren’t overtly political, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make some great observations or tell a tale. The story telling on “Foolish People” is a fantastic song describing the consequences of drug use. “Talkin’ Back To The Streets” is just really honest relation of dealing with where you’re from versus where you’re going. The only real complaint I have with Highlighter is that it’s excessively long, with twenty tracks clocking in at over seventy minutes. There aren’t a lot of filler tracks, but it’s a bit of an undertaking to listen to the album all the way through and digest as a whole.

Highlighter is an album that I feel we’ll be coming back to for years to come. For an album that seems pretty straight forward, there’s actually a lot to get through. I’ve been trying to comprehend everything happening here, but I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve missed. And that’s why People Under The Stairs will be around for years to come.