Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance by Belle & Sebastian

Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, Belle and Sebastian's ninth album, arrived on 19 January 2015, and it's the sound of Stuart Murdoch's Glasgow bookworms heading for the dancefloor. They went to Atlanta in 2014 to make it with producer Ben H. Allen III, their first time working with him, and it was also their first record to go out worldwide through Matador.

For a band forever filed next to the Smiths and Nick Drake, this is a bold swerve: pulsing synths and four-on-the-floor grooves sit alongside the wistful chamber pop the faithful came for. "The Party Line" led the charge, announced as the first single at the end of October 2014 and first aired on BBC 6 Music, and the album went on to crack the UK top 10 and reach number 28 in the US.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.