“Everybody’s got a secret preference,” Wet Leather vocalist Matthew Bernstein repeats on the Brooklyn five-piece’s new single. His penchant for the wide open hallmarks of mid-’80s synth-pop and disco are hardly so well concealed. “Secret Preference” is all big boom-clap drums, silky falsetto, and funk bass — clinically tested summer music, in other words, with a chorus that’s only obvious enough to work. Long live 1985.
The release comes with two remixes of debut single “Stop Me If I’m Doing It Wrong” — one by StaG, one by Frugal Father, both dreamy — which is also available on the group’s BandCamp. “Lyrically these songs have more in common with the neurotic world of Philip Roth than Prince,” Bernstein says, though you need not notice. Wet Leather performs in Brooklyn, at South Williamsburg venue Baby’s All Right, on 19 May.