While a rare few among us (Bono, Donald Trump, Gary Bettman) can totally relate to every word of Weezer’s “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)”, most of us tend to have a less-than-inflated sense of self-worth.

Take, for example, Finn Andrews, lead singer and songwriter for London’s the Veils. With the group’s fourth and latest album, the just-released Time Stays, We Go, the frontman has accomplished something rare and cool, namely a guitar-based record that transcends easy categorization. The New Zealand–raised artist might be based in the land of Britpop, but he seems more enamoured with songs flared with desert-noir guitar, Tijuana horns, and goth-king vocals. He also shows himself to have a way with words, his lyrics sometimes darker than a mortuary at midnight (“We know there’s no turning back/And the road ahead, the road ahead is burnt to black” from the hymnal Caribbean-pop number “Train With No Name”) and sometimes gorgeously effective despite their simplicity (“She’s 19 in blue jeans/Don’t even know what love may mean” from the synth-soaked post-country brooder “The Pearl”).

Despite what he’s pulled off with Time Stays, We Go, Andrews isn’t the kind of guy who sits around the house completely convinced of his own genius.

“You spend so much of your internal life preparing for a record—writing it and then recording it—and it’s all done in solitary confinement,” the singer says, on the line from the land of newspaper-wrapped fish and chips. “Then suddenly it’s time for everyone to hear it. That causes a certain amount of anxiety. The only good thing is that, the more records I put out, the less I worry about what people are going to think about them. The only people it’s scary to play them for are people you’ve known for a long time, which means that you respect their opinion.”

For Andrews, that shortlist includes his wife and his dad, Barry Andrews, the latter a somewhat legendary figure in the global music underground thanks to a résumé that includes a stint in XTC and the fronting of postpunk greats Shriekback. Both gave their stamp of approval to Time Stays, We Go, which was recorded stateside in California’s fabled Laurel Canyon, this giving it something in common with the Veils’ 2006 sophomore breakthrough, Nux Vomica, which came together in the same studio, Seedy Underbelly.

“With that record we had the luxury of time, which we didn’t have this time,” Andrews notes. “On this one, we went there with 10 songs knowing that we’d have three weeks to record them, so there was really no time for fucking around.”

What the Veils ended up with was a record that suggests Andrews spent plenty of time soaking up the sounds of foreign lands during the writing process. The strings-heavy “Candy Apple Red” contains traces of Gypsy calypso, “Turn From the Rain” works a mariachi vibe that would impress Calexico, while “Dancing With the Tornado” is Americana at its most overcast and gloomy.

Andrews should be proud of everything he’s accomplished with Time Stays, We Go. Evidently, however, he couldn’t be bothered, a sure sign he’s not exactly convinced he’s the greatest thing since Muhammad Ali.

“I’m one of those guys who, the second I’m finished something, I start thinking about the next thing,” he says. “With this record, I think I had about 15 seconds of something approaching pride—it was when I got it on vinyl and then had something tangible to hold on to. Then it was ‘Well, on to the next thing,’ which, I guess, is odd and slightly perverse.”