Within the unsensational confines of indie rock, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is an unequivocal sensation, selling 100,000 copies of its self-titled debut without the benefit—or, perhaps more accurately, the albatross—of a record label. The band’s success is generally credited to the fact that bloggers have interpreted its moniker as a directive. Yet bloggers endorse young bands all the time. This one prospered for a reason—but was that reason really the debut album? Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is reedy and hesitant; once upon a time, before acts could sell thousands of CDs through the Internet, it would have been titled “demo.”

The quintet’s second album (available at clapyourhandssayyeah.com this week and in stores January 30) is again issued sans label. This means that nobody is pushing the musicians to work hard: There are no finicky record executives, and their fans previously went batty over a demo. It’s almost as an afterthought that this vigorous album runs circles around its predecessor. The group’s coup was obtaining producer Dave Fridmann, who swathes these songs in the trimmings familiar from his work with the Flaming Lips. This effectively broadens the band’s introspective material; more notably, it sounds cool on headphones, with shades of pop savants Spector and Eno. Some Loud Thunder is a record that music-biz types didn’t believe these players had in them—of course, this is the scent of promise that wooed all those fans in the first place. — Jay Ruttenberg

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah plays Bowery Ballroom Jan 23.

See our feature on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah— “Leap year”