Channelling disco’s pulse without sacrificing their icy mystique, Ladytron return with Paradises, their most danceable offering since 2002’s Light & Magic. Paradises, the British electro outfit’s eighth album, unfolds like a heist staged in perpetual dusk: synth lines lock into place over the album’s 16 tracks, vocals drift cool and watchful, and the production stretches just taut enough to make every measure feel loaded.

Two decades removed from the minimalist electronic-tinged new wave that first defined them, Ladytron no longer sound interested in proving anything. Where their early records felt deliberately aloof, Paradises sounds assured instead of guarded. The circuitry is warmer and the low end more physical, embedded in repetition rather than conventional hooks. Instead of revisiting the sleek austerity that made them cult fixtures in the early 2000s, the band lean into movement, treating restraint as a tool rather than a limitation.

On “Death in London,” they treat voice less as a narrator than as another slightly menacing instrument — think the otherworldness of Cocteau Twins applied to industrial synth-pop — while “We Wrote Our Names in the Dust” is like unlocking a hidden level: 80s claps bouncing like bonus coins and an 8-bit gusto that dares you to keep playing. Across Paradises, Ladytron keep everything in check, yet still manage to slip a little grit under the surface.