For the longest time, I couldn't have told you why those two W's sitting next to each other in the middle of Slowwave made me feel so uneasy. Something about two W's in cahoots looked to me like dissonance. Then it hit me: Deep sleep is also known as slow-wave sleep, and it is the period of our rest when non-rapid eye movements take place and our brain waves stretch out, long and languid. Those two jagged W's in the middle of the word put me in mind of that moment when your brain betrays you, sending off alarm bells and prompting you to jerk awake and face yet more of the nighttime, laying conscious in your bed.

Damn W's.

Slowwave (whom some may know as, formerly, Freeze & Fur Coat) mirror my anxieties with their music which, lovely though it may be, always maintains a prickly coldness. The songs on the band's debut EP, Drag Lake Sin, are awash in electronic reverb and slow, steady melodies. But then there are those jittery waves, those chipped beats in the background, threatening to poke holes in Slowwave's hazy cellophane. It's as if Slowwave threatens to - at any moment - rudely jolt you from the transfixed state of their own creation.

Freeze & Fur Coat came into existence in 2007, under the umbrella of the now-defunct Dear Records collective. F&FC separated themselves from the Dear Records pack by putting more of an emphasis on rock influences, as opposed to the mostly folk- or electronica-leaning Dear Records artists. Last year, though, F&FC frontman Brandon Hughes decided it was time for a change.

"Around August we decided to concentrate our efforts more and we felt like it was a good idea to start fresh with a new name and new songs," Hughes says. "Freeze & Fur Coat was always sort of an experiment, side-project thing. Once it started gaining more momentum, it kind of didn't feel like the name or the idea of the band fit anymore."

Drag Lake Sin is currently available on Slowwave's Bandcamp, and 50 copies of it will be given away to first arrivers at the album's release party. Fair warning: listening to it in bed may give you troubled dreams.

Slowwave

with Hail and Slushy
Friday, Jan. 28, 8 p.m., $5
Peabody Waldorf Gallery, 745 S. Broadway, Tacoma