Slutty boys need love, too. And they don’t come any sluttier than Franz Ferdinand, the dance-whore foursome from Glasgow. Somehow, these lads get lustier, pervier, catchier with every album—no other band sounds this shrewd while exploring the intersections between true romance and gong-bangingly urgent libido. Tonight is a celebration of both, an album where even the sincere love songs sound infinitely filthy. When Alex Kapranos croons “Bite Hard,” a song that does not concern a visit to the dentist, he sounds hopelessly heartsick over his girl, yet also as though his hormones are lit up like a pinball machine.

Franz Ferdinand have always proclaimed their mission to be making “music for girls to dance to,” but while their first two albums thrived on guitar power, thumping like rock yet surging like disco, Tonight goes for a more brazen synth-pop groove. Highlights like “Lucid Dreams,” “Ulysses” and “What She Came For” are sleek little rhythm killers, bouncing from one low-end synth squeal to the next. The template is obviously David Bowie in his late-’70s Berlin phase, but they have zero interest in using their keyboards to sound lofty or cerebral—they just want to get the dirtiest, greasiest moans they can coax out of their vintage Moogs and Korgs.

As usual, Franz Ferdinand pack a greatest-hits album’s worth of melodic tricks into each tune, while Kapranos purrs the sort of pick-up lines that would earn a lesser man a gimlet in the face. “Bite Hard” begins as a seething piano ballad (“You don’t know the pseudonyms I assume for you”) before bursting into a desperately gooey rocker that ends with Kapranos licking his sweetie’s photo just to find out how the chemicals taste. But the most magnificent moment is “Turn It On,” where Kapranos rants about jealousy, devotion and loneliness over Nick McCarthy’s fat synth buzz, until it explodes into a Beatles-style “yeah, yeah, yeah” chant.

The whole album is paced as a soundtrack to a night on the town, starting with the anticipatory come-on of “Ulysses,” building into the lecherous strut of “Kiss Me” (“Lick your cigarette, then kiss me”) and peaking with “Lucid Dreams,” eight dazed minutes of electro pop that lurches off the dance floor and bangs into the nearest wall. It all ends with the acoustic comedown “Katherine Kiss Me,” where Kapranos curls into a fetal position on the carpet, plucks his guitar and wonders why the girl from last night left through the fire escape. It’s a surprisingly vulnerable finale—a morning-after moment from a band all about tonight.

Download “Kiss Me,” “Bite Hard,” “Turn It On”