As the three-minute video for “No No No” progresses, it becomes apparent that beneath the brightness and whimsy, something is not quite right. The dead-eyed band plays in front of a salmon-colored screen, accompanied by a mustachioed old man with a psychopathic smile, a painter, and a stuffed skunk that makes an appearance as an instrument in the horn section. A makeup artist powders singer-songwriter Zach Condon’s face at the beginning of the video, but a minute later his eyes are bloodshot and puffy and his face is sweaty. The painter mimes the motion of painting while not actually doing anything, and the old man breaks a bottle over Condon’s head. By the end of the video, the band is invisible, instruments floating in the air in front of bodiless, clapping hands.

Like the video for its title track, Beirut’s latest album, No No No, loosely covers its strange furniture of desperate melancholy with a thin sheet of bright horns and smooth vocals. Its surface cheer comes to seem like the strained smile of someone desperately trying to hold himself together after a personal disaster, reflecting what might be Condon’s fragile emotional state following his physical and mental breakdown after 2013’s touring cycle for The Rip Tide and the end of his marriage.

 Beirut’s music is often described as “world music” because of its global influences (primarily mariachi, Balkan music, and French chanson), and its use of somewhat unconventional instruments. Condon, for example, plays the trumpet, flugelhorn, and ukulele, and the band often uses a strong, sweeping horn section to heighten the sense of wanderlust, tragedy, or nostalgia in otherwise unexceptional indie songs. In No No No, disparate elements fit together like well-worn puzzle pieces to create an album that, while not a major evolution for the band, is distinctively Beirut.

 Within the indie genre, Beirut excels in its “world music” niche. But while few bands could incorporate such a variety of instruments without sounding strained, Beirut often fails to differentiate itself from its indie contemporaries. At times, Beirut starts to sound like other contemporary indie bands: “At Once” sounds like a melancholy Grizzly Bear song, violins on “As Needed” are reminiscent of Arcade Fire’s “Funeral,” and “Pacheco”’s warm guitar and slurred vocals harken to a My Morning Jacket track. Beirut’s familiar indie tropes tend to overshadow its more distinguished “world music” qualities, leading to an album that sounds tired rather than innovative.

But “world music” takes on a different meaning in No No No as the songs themselves reflect a burning desire for movement and change. “If we don’t go now, we won’t get very far,” sings Condon in the title track, the second track of the album. The “la-la-la’s” throughout the song are reminiscent of a sea shanty, but their edges have been gently smoothed out into an lilting indie singsong. In “August Holland,” in which crisp piano chords pay homage to the crisp, breezy transition between the end of summer and the beginning of fall, Con don repeatedly sings, “I wanna be there now,” the rising and falling of his voice reflecting his longing.

At times, the band strips away its outward cheerfulness in moments of raw sadness and nostalgia. In “At Once,” Condon asks: “How do you know at once, at last, at all?” over steady, melancholy piano chords. The seemingly nonsensical questions hint at Condon’s tumultuous mental state in spite of the steady rhythm, and a crescendoing chorus of horns, like the beginning of birdsongs at dawn, interrupts the questions and adds urgency to Condon’s confusion.

“As Needed,” a three-minute instrumental halfway through the album, uses soft acoustic guitar, jazzy piano and drums, and cascading violins to create the sound of a lazy rainy day. Ironically, in spite of its name, the song is not needed as an interlude; the album is already mellow enough. Its subtle moodiness, however, is not an unwelcome addition to the album as a whole.

 In spite of the interplay between moments of forced cheerfulness and confused vulnerability, the band does not take itself too seriously on No No No. On “Fener,” the almost excessive choral backup, the glockenspiel, and the spacey keyboard that begin as soon as the song suddenly shifts rhythm suggest that Beirut may be self-consciously mocking its own style; the song is excessively indie. Beirut even reveals this self-deprecating sense of humor in the video for “No No No”: It parodies Wes Anderson’s iconic style, often associated with hipsters and the over-the-top “twee”-ness.

 While No No No is by no means Beirut’s worst album, at times it seems like a somewhat reluctant or lackluster attempt to follow up on 2011’s The Rip Tide. The sound of No No No is shrunken in scale compared to the The Rip Tide’s grandiosity, as Condon has replaced some of the heavier horns with greater use of soft piano chords and violins. But what the album lacks in scale, it makes up for in subtlety: complex emotions peek out from under shabby carpets woven from upbeat rhythms and bright chords, and the sadder songs are nostalgic rather than tragic or angst-ridden. Although listening to No No No is by no means an immersive experience, the album is interesting enough to play as casual background music. And if you like it enough to listen to twice, it contains a surprising amount of emotional depth.