A nerd, as Powerful Science keyboard player/vocalist Joshua Miller defines it, is a person who is very much interested in a particular strain of something.

From the outside, there’s an understandable impulse is to slap that label onto Powerful Science, but in what specific way? Myriad science fiction themes twist through the electronic synthscape of its new album Square Wave, bolstered by the addition of Emma Lyness’s vocals and keys. Though drummer Peter Kapinos holds down the band’s lightly eccentric live show, the album is completely electronic, populated by bleeps and bloops that stream beneath a Thirst Things First record (without its pop punk influence or intergalactic charade). Its trading in John Friedel (former Universe Contest) and Nate Luginbill (Bogusman, Bien Fang) for Lyness from 2015’s Nerd Alert to now allows more room for those types of flourishing, at-times eerie electronic blooms and centers Miller’s vocal pop leanings.

That type of exploration helps define the trio’s nerdiness.

“We spend a lot of time experimenting and messing around with new equipment, trying new things,” Miller says. “We’re nerdy in that fashion, in that we don’t rest very much.”

Before its July 12 album release show, Powerful Science explains its continued foray into the electronic and why that sound befits them much better than guitar rock could.

Video by Lauren Farris
“Colorado Day” by Powerful Science