It might be an indie-rock cliché, but for all intents and purposes, The Sea and Cake are criminally underrated. The four Chicago-based art-school graduates, who had previously played in groups including Shrimp Boat, Gastr Del Sol and Tortoise, came together in the mid-’90s to create jazzy, introspective pop that sails on a melancholy breeze. With eight albums to their name since 1994, The Sea and Cake are primarily noted by critics for one thing: consistency.

“Philosophically we’ve always made music in the same way,” admits lead vocalist/guitarist Sam Prekop, calling from the road in Washington, DC. “But we’ve discovered that music has to evolve. Even though we haven’t radically changed, the results are different.

“I feel like when we started making records, most people were playing proto–grunge rock or whatever. We were incorporating a broader type of music into our vocabulary, one that’s since become commonplace.”

Recorded in three months after touring Australia, the new Car Alarm hardly deviates from the template set by the band’s 2007 effort, the sumptuous, minimal Everybody. The songs seem to have been injected with energy, their guitars vibrating with prettily dissonant harmony. While album-opener “Aerial” begins with a hum of pulsing chords, the tension is quickly broken as Prekop’s warm vibrato teases out the inflections in his oblique poetry. Car Alarm might be an idiosyncratic choice of chill-out record for those who find it hard to relax, but on a track like “The Staircase,” where the guitars twitch warmly and a few loose strains of melody gradually become the solo, the effect is transporting.

Though they’ve only played two shows so far on their new tour, Prekop says the new material has informed their performances, encouraging them to play longer, more experimental treatments of their back catalogue.

“We’ve basically been keeping ourselves from getting too sleepy; developing those elements that can make or break songs.” Their recent surge in activity — after going on hiatus from 2004 to 2007, they’ve since made two records in as many years — is out of character for a band who have otherwise kept their development slow and steady. Are The Sea and Cake ready to take a risk?

“If you listen to the very first record and this new record, they almost sound like different bands,” Prekop replies. “Other music starts to inform the way you sound; you get better at expressing ideas. It starts to change your perspective.”

The Sea and Cake were appropriating Afro-pop before Vampire Weekend had even matriculated. Since their 1994 self-titled debut, their fondness for world music has defined their sound, drawing on styles of bossa nova and African guitar playing and melding them with their dreamy, electronic, syncopated beats.

“Those are some of our earliest inspirations,” reveals Prekop. “I mean, Afro-pop is a really broad term, of course. It’s been so long that I’m not even sure what slice of African music we’ve been influenced by.”

The band members have also taken time to pursue other projects. Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt have each released solo works, drawing on the lulling rhythms of The Sea and Cake’s signature aesthetic. Prewitt also writes and draws his own comic book, Sof’ Boy, while drummer John McEntire remains active in Tortoise and is a prolific producer. But as Prekop notes, The Sea And Cake are “definitely a band in the band tradition.”

After having played together for over 15 years, The Sea and Cake rest on a particular precipice of fame — they’re drooled over in Pitchfork, yet their songs are less likely to be tapped for an episode of Gossip Girl. Does Prekop feel comfortable with his perennial status in the Indie Rock Academy of the Underrated?

“It would be fun to be famous,” he admits. “While I feel like I’m pretty lucky to have had a career in music for this long… occasionally, I do feel that we should get more props than we do. I feel like we’ve been doing certain things for a long time that are sort of commonplace now.

“I was really only in one other band, called Shrimp Boat. But we weren’t actually musicians. We smacked of bands that came out of art school, meaning we did whatever we wanted, and never paid attention. When I started, I hardly played guitar and didn’t even sing. That can be helpful when you’re encouraged by other art students.”  

“These early ideas carried over into The Sea and Cake, and by the time Shrimp Boat had dissolved, I felt much more accomplished making our peculiar type of music.”