With its plain name and its immediate sound, the Montreal quartet Think About Life does not necessarily lend itself to SEO: Here is a band concerned only with making good music.

“The one thing that I find is really driving the underground music scene is the Pitchforks,” says singer Martin Cesar. “It’s whether you get a good review or not. In our case, we sort of got what some people would call a ‘high bad’ review. So it didn’t generate anything.” Which means you very well may have missed Think About Life’s 2009 album, Family (Alien8), and its 10 tracks of upbeat and ecstatic pop music.

These are carefree dance songs for punctuating perfect summer days and nights. It’s fun-loving music to sate the pop appetites of kids waxing nostalgic for the days before MGMT decided it was the Flaming Lips.

A marked departure from the lo-fi twee-punk of Think About Life’s 2006 debut, Family may end up being but a step in the group’s evolution. After a couple lineup changes—-Greg Napier replaced Matt Shane behind the drum kit and Calia Thompson-Hannant came aboard to handle bass and spare vocal duties—-Think About Life’s first album is nowhere to be found in its live set.

“We’re focusing on Family because we decided that we wanted to go for a new approach for a lot of the songwriting and the songs to play,” Cesar says. “We just want to move forward, and we’ve started writing new songs right now. We’re concentrating more on the new stuff.”

The group has sprinkled a few new tunes into recent live sets, so expect to hear some funky, ecstatic songs along with cuts from Family. Drawing inspiration from Matisse paintings, Cesar says he has big hopes for the new tracks. “Personally, I want to create something that is a bit more focused and a bit more melodic,” Cesar says. “It’s all about expanding from what we had on Family.”

If Think About Life hasn’t established much of an American fanbase, its current jaunt could change that—-not that the band tailors its music to fit any locale’s tastes. “We’re not trying to make one form of music that really connects itself to one part of the world.” Cesar says. “The beauty of this project is the fact that we’re actually experimenting and trying different things. Some songs come off with pop arrangements, and some a bit less. Within that, there’s still sort of the adventurous, trying-new-things aspect.”

Think About Life performs tonight with Dragonette at DC9.