In the three years since Venus Hum's well-received major-label debut Big Beautiful Sky, the trio had a recording contract collapse in a merger, lead singer Annette Strean lost her singing voice, and changing musical trends put ice-cool pop-tronica out of favor again. Undaunted—or at least only slightly daunted—Venus Hum returns with The Colors In The Wheel, which deals head-on with what the band has been facing. The album opens with the light, pretty, almost tropical "Turn Me Around," an acoustic ballad that picks up strength as it goes, adding burbling electronics and a Strean vocal that gradually shifts from whispery to richly throaty. It's an arresting way to begin: tinkering with the Venus Hum sound without dropping the band's commitment to connecting the synthetic and the human.