“Clickety click click, the music makes a musical sound,” Dan Bejar speak-sings on “The Television Music Supervisor,” his drowsy voice suspended amid ambient synth pads. And the songwriter’s 12th Destroyer LP does indeed make musical sounds, even at its clickiest—but it can be challenging to dig them out. Have We Met is Bejar’s most difficult work, using a skeletal electronic framework to emphasize his two most divisive qualities: a nasal, wordy vocal delivery and seemingly stream-of-consciousness lyrics that blur the line between vivid surrealism and goofy improvisation. (“I was like the laziest river, a vulture predisposed to eating off floors,” he sings in borderline-monotone on “Crimson Tide.” “No, wait, I take that back/ I was more like an ocean, stuck inside hospital corridors.”) Working with producer—and former New Pornographers bandmate— John Collins, he chisels away at the already stripped-back style of 2017’s ken , using chilly synths and repetitive rhythms as the album’s primary texture. There are glimpses of the suave sophisti-pop that percolated throughout 2011’s Kaputt (like on the glossy funk of “Cue Synthesizer”), but the effect here is far more muted. The few hooks—the chiming synth of “It Just Doesn’t Happen,” the airy singalong of “foolssong”—don’t work on a pure pop level, and the vocals often disrupt the ambience. These songs exist in a hazy in-between space—and perhaps that’s the point. Bejar has earned our respect, so we must follow him down this strange rabbit hole. But don’t expect many earworms, and be prepared for plenty of “clickety click.”