I see in recent Amazon.UK blurbs for a few bands's albums the term prog pop being used, e.g. for bands such as School Of Language, That Was The Week and (the recent South Banks Arts award winners) Everything Everything. Having bought these three bands’ albums, I discover that in part the term seems to indicate the use of prog instrumentation, arrangements, etc. but with a significantly reduced level of complexity whilst newer rhythms are pulled into the mix, allowing relatively short 3 to 4 minutes tunes to be made. With the exception of Everything Everything, so far I find the music a bit hit/miss in catching my attention, so I'm relatively disappointed because of some lack of development/change through whole albums. (I must admit I like the first two tunes on School of Language's album). Having not seen these bands live, I wonder if tune development is left for their gigs. Comments please. BTW One of the few respondents at PE suggested Field Music was the band which best typified this genre(?) and their album Measure was ordered today.

I have to thank Sid Smith for alerting me to Everything Everything (who I can keep going back to), via one of his excellent reviews at his Yellow Room blog. Interesting Sid  suggests The Mars Volta and even KC as influences which I've so far failed to hear, while instead I hear a 21st century pop rock, with a liberal helping of a cut down variant of  Gentle Giant ringing in my ears.

How well does these various forms of prog pop work with other folks here? Any other related bands I should sample?

along with Foals definately try out Minus the Bear and This Town Needs Guns