A Solex is a little electric bicycle, unassuming but with lots of pep. Elisabeth Esselink is a record store owner from Amsterdam who finds herself constantly awash in old vinyl records, as any good record store owner should. So one day, she took a bunch of them and cut them up, then put the pieces back together to make so unassuming music with lots of pep. Thus was Solex born.

Up until very recently Solex specialized in kitschy sample-heavy pop; even Pick Up, which relies on live instrumentation, is sampled; Esselink went to a bunch of shows and recorded them for the album. It’s easy to spot a Solex song—just listen for the winning-but-awkward schoolgirl voice. A lot of pop music is described as sugary or like ear candy, but Solex is truly a confection; something about the charming old-school samples of long-forgotten 1930s jazz standards or the often-nonsensical lyrics strikes the palate just perfectly.

After three albums with Matador, Solex has moved on to another label, and is readying The Laughing Stock Of Indie Rock for release. Apparently there’s real instruments this time around. On the one hand, it’s about time she moved away from the record-store collage aesthetic; then again, it was such a fun place to be.