Sundara Karma: "We want to get a lot of new music out; no time like the present"

Whisper it quietly, but we all know indie is sometimes a little generic, right? Four young lads with guitars, bass and drums - the last gang desperate to escape a boring town - wearing reassuringly uniform high street fashions and timeless haircuts, dreaming one day of getting a nod from a passing Arctic Monkey or Grandfather Weller. Yeah. That's not Sundara Karma.

Let's be honest here; even referring to Reading's favourite sons within defined, generic boxes seems somewhat like chaining them to a particularly magnolia radiator at this point. Though their first album, 'Youth Is Only Ever Fun in Retrospect', played the indie hero game perfectly, by the time they brought it to a close at scene-Mecca Brixton Academy, they already felt like a band with far more to say. Once last year's 'Ulfilas' Alphabet' came round, they were a different prospect entirely - space glamsters fallen from the stars, infinitely more interesting than the bulk of their peers. Less an evolution, more a revolution in platform heels, it suggested that - while already brilliant - there was so, so much more to come.

That starts right now, it turns out, with a brand new EP of shiny, shifting future pop. The first taster of what promises to be a whole raft of new material to follow, it would be wrong to suggest this was Sundara Karma in their final form, but rather a fully realised, brilliant visage along the way.

Leader Oscar Pollock seems ready. "The timing just felt right for us," he muses, when asked if there was a temptation to wait for these 'uncertain times' to regain a sense of normality before dropping something so startlingly new. "We want to get a lot of new music out over the upcoming months. No time like the present, regardless of all the horror."

It's that sense of brave endeavour which marks out a band unconcerned with the pressure of change - but that doesn't mean each sonic shift is so deliberate. "It's definitely not a conscious priority," Oscar explains. "I think it maybe stems from a sense of not being good enough or not knowing enough because this then leads you onto learning and absorbing. I really want to push myself and improve as a songwriter so I think change is just a natural part of that."

With an approach to music that's developing in time ("the process is becoming more refined. I think I'm getting closer to 'the source'"), it's clear Sundara Karma don't back away from the new. As the industry big wigs talk of acts needing to drop new music regularly in a streaming age, they're the latest act to deliver new music in a more digestible chunk before getting into the business of a new album. "Truthfully I find it quite exciting," Oscar confides. "We are definitely moving into the 'vibe' age, where a vibe or playlist is more likely to get the hits over an album.

"Maybe songs will be a thing of the past and people will just want a continual stream of lo-fi coding beats generated by AI," he ponders. "This is already happening, though. I guess people just want to know exactly what they are gonna get when they click onto a link. If you're writing great songs, you will be fine. Maybe not so much if your songs are mediocre. The robots will replace you.