A dirty dead-end in London’s Kings Cross is nobody’s idea of sanctuary. But on November 9, hours after Donald Trump’s victory was confirmed, escape lies at the end of this dark alleyway. In an upstairs rehearsal room, the xx are practicing for an imminent BBC performance; in a fortnight, they’ll travel to Croatia to kick off their first tour in more than two years. The group’s reemergence comes along with their third album, I See You, a record that knows something about surviving dark times. This evening, the outside world is well and truly banished.

They run a closed rehearsal, where producer Jamie Smith’s hulking crescent of synths are only audible through headphones. A single serene candle atop Romy Madley Croft’s guitar amp seems to mock the discarded cups littering the low-ceilinged room, bringing calm to a day of disbelief. “I try not to check my phone first thing, but…” Madley Croft trails off, looking down at her Siouxsie and the Banshees hoodie. “I thought it was a joke. I’m speechless.”

Not that the xx are an explicitly political band. Co-leads Oliver Sim and Madley Croft are both gay, and there’s an argument to be made for the xx providing a rare portrait of queer intimacy, though they prefer to see it as universal. In the rehearsal room, it’s easy to imagine them as teenagers in a South London garage: Sim the leader, Madley Croft the guide, Smith the silent sage.

“Let’s power through, and if something goes wrong, just let it happen,” says Sim. From his synth battalion, Smith triggers the vocal samples from “Gosh,” a single from his 2015 solo album, In Colour, which turned the band’s shyest member into its unlikely breakout star. Over the track’s chomping rhythm, Madley Croft starts singing “Shelter,” from the xx’s self-titled debut. The mash-up shouldn’t work. “Gosh” clatters, while an airy synth seems to trace the London skyline; “Shelter” quietly anguishes over vanishing sensations. But more than 16 years of friendship has led to a certain mind-meld, and the tracks fuse perfectly, Smith’s song heightening the desperation in Madley Croft’s lyrics. As the synths wind skyward, she sets down her guitar. Sim spontaneously extends a hand, and the singers turn a hug into a sway, spinning slowly until they return to their microphones for the song’s final lines.

“I like our slow dance for ‘Gosh’—let’s slow dance!” he tells her afterwards. She’s less convinced. They run through the song again, the pair dancing more purposefully this time, their clasped hands pointing out as her head rests in the crook of his neck. When they pull away, they hold on until their fingertips brush apart. “We’re gonna do that!” says Sim excitedly, poking Madley Croft’s middle with one finger and pointing at the floor with another.

It’s not Miley Cyrus’ inflatable hotdog, but this kind of showmanship—any kind of showmanship—doesn’t come easy to the xx. Before they attempt “Lips,” a downright lustful new song built around big drums and a haunting modern classical sample, Madley Croft asks Sim, “Should we face forward?” She then turns to me to apologize; I’m watching from a couch six feet away from their microphones. “We have to get used to facing forward and not looking at Jamie. I’ll look past you.” Faced with a painfully intimate audience, Madley Croft winces and recoils from the high notes.