It’s been 17 years since Rob Garza and Eric Hilton, the duo better known as Thievery Corporation, released their debut album, Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi. A mix of dub, jazz, bossa nova, and broadly speaking, trip-hop, it set the blueprint for nearly every release by the pair to follow. Though there have been new elements constantly being added, overall, if you were to pick up a Thievery Corporation record, you knew what you were getting. It isn’t that Thievery Corporation have been making the same record, but they certainly know how to stay in their wheelhouse. But for their eighth album, Saudade (ESL Music), Garza and Hilton have decided to tweak the script a bit by releasing a purely bossa nova record.

For a group that has built their career on slicing, stitching, and blending genres together, taking a conservative approach and focusing on only one seems radical. It’s not necessarily unexpected as bossa nova has been part of the Thievery Corp sound from the beginning, but what is surprising is how straight they play it with Saudade. The songs aren’t post-anything or bossa nova with a twist. With the exception of minor production touches, it’s a faithful and respectful excursion. Traditionalists may want to argue over instrumentation or the purity of the stylistic variations, but that seems like a different conversation. If nothing else, Thievery Corporation should be applauded for delving deeper and not trying to fall back into their comfort zone.

Saudade is a Portuguese word that means “a longing for something or someone that is lost, a contented melancholy, or, simply, the presence of absence.” That feeling is conjured in sonic overtones, but with only three songs in English, it’s up to more international ears to verify whether it’s expressed verbally. It’s to the credit of the cast of vocalists—longtime Thievery cohort LouLou Ghelichkhani, Elin Melgarejo, Nouvelle Vague singer Karina Zeviani, Natalia Clavier, and former Bitter:Sweet singer and songwriter Shana Halligan—that the songs still have that kind of punch even without the translation. For the songs that are in English, they scratch the “hurts so good” itch. Saudade shows that whether globe-hopping or extended vacation, Thievery Corporation are tour guides worth following.