Imagine if your favorite post-rockers actually went outside. What kind of music would your math-loving, technically obsessed loopers make if they took a second to look up at the heavens and saw anything other than the far north’s patented endless expanse of grey? We have to think it would sound something like Treadles’ Bees Are Thieves Too.

While the four-piece know their way around knotty and complicated bits of herky-jerky, layered indie rock, their new EP also makes room for the softer curves of the natural world. Across six too-quick tracks, the group frequently peels away sheets of droning sounds or complicated playing to share something a bit more human. The group uses their dazzling vocal harmonies to provide a bridge between the clangorous and calmative moments of each song, making it easier to believe that the rigid, whip-smart sound of “An Albatross” and the pastoral, finger-plucked closer “Soft Heap” can exist in the same album.

Treadles started out as the solo project of Kara Stafford, a.k.a. KC, and it has maintained that feeling of that solo songwriter intimacy even as it’s gained a few extra layers of harsh noise and occasional screaming. The end result sounds like an unpleasant truth realized in a serene location, like taking a walk in the woods and noticing there’s significantly less buzzing than when you were a kid.