Era Extraña is the second studio album by American electronic music band Neon Indian. It was released on September 7, 2011, by Static Tongues and Mom + Pop Music. The recording took place between the winter of 2010 and 2011 during frontman Alan Palomo's visit to Finland. Containing influences and elements of psychedelic pop, shoegaze, and new wave, the album has the same summery sound as the band's debut studio album, Psychic Chasms (2009), but with a darker and more serious tone. Era Extraña received generally positive reviews from critics, a number of whom called it more focused, tight, and cohesive than Psychic Chasms, while some praised the songcraft. However, some mixed reviews noted that on this album, Neon Indian lost much of the charm that was apparent on Psychic Chasms. The album peaked at number 74 on the US Billboard 200, the band's first release to appear on the chart. The band toured North America from December 2011 to May 2012 to promote Era Extraña. Background and production The album was recorded from the winter of 2010 to 2011 at Kalevankatu 45 in Helsinki, Finland, when Palomo lived there for four weeks. Palomo primarily wrote the album using a Voyetra-8, a Korg MS-20, and a modified Commodore 64, with the first weeks of production in Helsinki involving him learning this equipment. Palomo first saw the Voyetra-8 in the music video for New Order's "The Perfect Kiss" (1985), saying that he was amazed by its appearance: "It's this bizarre, kaleidoscope interface with these knobs, and it's really physical to use, a strange kind of challenge." Palomo's songwriting on Era Extraña was more influenced by his live performances than his previous projects, and he claimed that he had never expected to perform his songs live before. He said that "it was an influence; not so much something that limited me, but a feeling that lead to longer, more soundscape-driven songs. That was something that was undeniably in my mind: 'What would I want to be playing every night for eight months?' And the album evolved from there." Unlike Neon Indian's debut studio album Psychic Chasms (2009), which involved creating "microloops" via building up one-bar samples into multiple bars that would make up a full song, Palomo said that in composing Era Extraña, he recorded a riff from a sound he made and tried to "keep that momentum up". For Era Extraña,