Cary Pratt is a little bit behind the times. Although it’s been 15 years since Napster sent major labels scrambling, the local singer-songwriter—who performs as Prairie Cat—still doesn’t own a single MP3.

“I’ve never been really good at navigating those sites to find stuff in that way,” he admits. “It’s a lot easier for me to go to the record store. I have those little download cards, too, that you get with the albums, and I haven’t retrieved any of them.”

He doesn’t consider himself a Luddite, but he notes he doesn’t own an iPhone, and instead prefers to enjoy music on his portable Panasonic Shockwave CD player. When it comes to at-home listening, his hi-fi setup is an audiophile’s delight: “I just bought another pair of speakers yesterday,” he explains. “I think I have four dedicated systems—stereos that I listen to things on. Then three different sets of studio headphones.”

Pratt uses his multiple systems as a way to carefully pore over his mixes and master recordings. This sense of perfectionism fuels his work as Prairie Cat, and it’s part of the reason why it took him five years to follow up his 2009 album It Began/Ended With Sparks.

“Every mix can be better,” he says. “When I listen back to albums that I’ve made, for myself, all I hear is mistakes. I hear the tail end of that guitar solo that didn’t get faded out properly.”

It’s thanks to his self-critical ear that the newly released Who Knows Where to Begin? is such a beautifully meticulous collection of quirky, catchy keyboard pop. The arrangements are organic and tasteful, with burbling rhythms and instantly hummable hooks that imbue the poignant lyrics with a sense of fun.

This emotional complexity is on display on the standout cut “No Bedroom”, which offsets its shimmying grooves with jarring fretwork and lyrical accusations of infidelity before shifting into a smooth breakdown led by sexy sax solos. “Got Nothin’ ” is similarly multifaceted: the melodies are honey-sweet, but Pratt’s lyrics tell of romantic manipulation and include the hilariously deadpan admission that his lover’s ring was actually bought for someone else.

“Surprisingly, during the writing of most of this record, I was in a happy, committed relationship,” Pratt points out.

At times, strings work their way into the mix: the sighing “Bad Storm” features elegiac “Eleanor Rigby”–style cello, while the vocalist’s croons on “Upright Beast” sometimes come interspersed with sawing violin interjections. Guitar and bass, meanwhile, were mostly contributed by Ryan Dahle of Limblifter and Mounties.

Dahle also handled production duties, and he helped Pratt to hone his subtle arrangement touches. The songwriter enthuses, “Just a little thing like the tambourine panning to the other side for the chorus and then coming back. That’s the stuff that Ryan and I are staying up at 2 in the morning in the studio geeking out on. Like, ‘When the guitar solo comes in, let’s put that shaker on the other side. It’ll be awesome.’”

“No Bedroom” features a particularly inspired detail: “We purposely made the choruses two bpm or three bpm faster on the click track,” Pratt reveals. “It gives a bit of excitement.”

He gradually sculpted the full-length during sporadic sessions, logging days in the studio whenever he had enough money. And now that it’s finally done, the musician’s approach to promoting it is proving to be similarly slow-paced: Prairie Cat’s upcoming Vancouver release show is his only currently scheduled show in support of the record, and he hopes to play a few more dates around British Columbia before the end of the year. He has no plans for any large-scale touring.

“The endgame for touring is more touring,” he observes. “You play Winnipeg for 15 people, and your goal is to go back next time and play for 30. So how many more times do you keep going back to Winnipeg until you’re playing for a stadium? But even then you’re still flying back to Winnipeg. That doesn’t appeal to me.”

Instead of logging miles on the road, Pratt is employed full-time in the music business. He works at the Vogue Theatre, teaches drums, and is a go-to session musician around town. His most prominent recent gig found him playing large shows as a live percussionist for Canadian supergroup Mounties (which features his studio buddy Dahle along with Hawksley Workman and Hot Hot Heat’s Steve Bays).

“I’m constantly around a backbeat,” he says happily. “It’s all day every day.”

The multi-instrumentalist is already plotting his next move as Prairie Cat. He plans to release a percussion record, on which vibraphone and marimba will be the only sources of melody. He speculates that his next album won’t take him as long to complete as the last one, even if that means occasionally settling for less than perfection.

“There’s a certain level of accep-tance you have to have when you make records,” he concedes. “You have to let go and realize that it’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t matter if you go to the A minor or the G. You still get to the end of the song. And most people aren’t going to know—just you will, and you’ll obsess over it and listen to it on four different stereos and it’ll keep you up at night.”

Prairie Cat plays the Emerald on Thursday (September 11).