on the UK Albums Chart. In the United States, it was released on 23 September 1997 by Elektra Records, becoming Stereolab's first entry on the Billboard 200 chart, where it peaked at number 111; by August 1999, it had sold over 75,000 copies in the country. Prior to the album's release, "Miss Modular" was issued on 1 September 1997 as a single (on 7" vinyl) and as an EP (on CD and 12" vinyl), reaching number 60 on the UK Singles Chart. The song's music video was directed and produced by Nick Abrahams and Mikey Tomkins. The track "Parsec" was later used in commercials for the then-newly launched Volkswagen New Beetle. A remastered and expanded edition of Dots and Loops, featuring a second disc containing demos and instrumental mixes of the album's songs, was released on 13 September 2019 by Duophonic and Warp as part of Stereolab's back catalogue reissue campaign. Critical reception and legacy Reviewing Dots and Loops in 1997, The Guardians Kathy Sweeney considered the album a successful move towards a more accessible and "pop-conscious" sound, with Stereolab's "avant-garde tendencies and atonal drone of old supplanted by breezy harmonies and, wait for it, tunes." Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly said that it "finds them at the top of their game, successfully brokering the seeming shotgun marriage of easy listening and acute intellect." NME writer Stephen Dalton stated that the band "have never sounded so comfortable in a pop setting than on Dots and Loops", which he deemed "both more accessible and more adventurous" than their previous album Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Terri Sutton of Spin praised the music as Stereolab's "most audacious" to date, and Los Angeles Times critic Lorraine Ali commented that the band "continues to revitalize Muzak for the '90s." In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau was more critical, finding that "the tunes fall off and the wacky smarts lose the charm of surprise." At the end of 1997, Dots and Loops was named among the best albums of the year by several publications, including Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, and The Wire. It also placed at number 28 in The Village Voices Pazz & Jop critics' poll. In his retrospective review of the album for Pitchfork, Eric Harvey praised Dots and Loops as Stereolab's "peak", finding them "embracing the bleeding edge of digital studio technology" and creating "a work both of its moment and […] that seems