The struggle to be creative, and develop extant works of art out of the relatively thin air that ideas can resemble, is often specific, attuned to one's own emotional makeup, and altogether excruciating. Throw in the constant hum and harumph of the internet, where one expression of impatience can feel like a thousand pounds on your chest, and the ensuing personal reaction can possess the stability of dropping an entire roll of Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke. For every "Where's the album?!?" tweet directed at someone like Frank Ocean or Grimes, there's always the possibility that the tweet itself is only going to make it harder for said album to arrive.

"It's hard to communicate, 'Hey, I'm glad you like what we do, but we're not doing it for you — we're doing it for us,'” KC explains, carefully. "You don't want to seem like you don't care what anyone else thinks or appreciate it — but it's about creating art, and you create art for yourself. It was really frustrating. There would be a photo of Brad and I at dinner, and people would be like, 'Shouldn't you be writing?' Can I eat a meal? I'd come crashing down any time someone said that."

"No one was more aware of it than we were," Brad says, addressing the time passed between Threads and Saved. "When people were like 'Where's the album?' I was like, 'We know!'" The experience caused the pair to wipe their social media presences clean several times — a bitter irony, considering the role that the earlier era of social media played in their gradual ascent. "It was the first case of experiencing the really critical side of the internet, where I was like, 'There is a very dark side to this,'" KC says. "Not just a couple of people — a whole corner of the internet you don't want to go to. One thing that frustrated people is that I kept saying, 'I'd rather never put another album out than not like the album.' That stressed everyone out, but I was like, 'I just want to put out something I like!'"

Consider the mission accomplished, then: the glimmering elegance of Saved is unmistakably the product of hard work and a striving for personal growth. At times, it's reminiscent of another duo that started out working in emo's confines before pursuing more explicitly electronic sounds: Canada's own Tegan and Sara, who count themselves as fans of Now, Now. "[Chris Walla] was raving about them around the time we recorded Sainthood," Tegan Quin said in an email. "They seemed effortlessly cool and confident for a new band, which I took to be a sign of their imminent success… They've evolved into a solid and significant band."