For several years now, Faded Paper Figures has been one of the best kept secrets of indie-electronic music, delivering gorgeous melodies, complex harmonies, and pop-cultural brilliance to a small and devoted fanbase online. With the release of their third album, “The Matter,” the band’s sound has matured into something more powerful and intense. Alternately sparse and epic, harmonic and grinding, pensive and playful, "The Matter” takes FPF beyond their electro-pop beginnings to create something even more sincere, epic, and profound. There are moments in “The Matter” that echo the band’s previous albums “Dynamo” and “New Medium” (all the glorious synth-blips, glitched-out riffs, and heartbreaking harmonies are still there), but a new sound has clearly emerged, with breathtaking orchestral scores, thick, powerful guitars, and more energetic, concentrated synths. Like the previous two albums, the lyrics glide with effortless sophistication through references both ironic and obscure. But there are passages here more intense, immediate, and playful. One moment “The Matter” conjures up images of traffic lights and factories, the next, soaring questions on the vast distances between galaxies--and always the intimate, vivid possibilities of love and pain. Given how powerfully “The Matter” astonishes with its daring energies and thoughtful lyrics, this electro-pop secret is going to be hard to contain in the months ahead. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons