The Sad Robots EP is currently a digital release, and not a hugely weighty one: There's an introductory track, there's a rather pristine live version of early Stars song "Going, Going, Gone", and there are four new songs, one of which isn't pretending to be much beyond a brief diversion. Still, it's convenient that Stars will have physical copies of this set to take along and sell during their fall tour. The music here burns slow and then smolders-- not unlike the piles of autumn leaves (under cold gray skies!) that dot the lyrics-- and it's easy to imagine this music serving, for a lot of concertgoers, as a wistful memento of That Cold Night We Saw Stars. That, after all, is exactly the role Stars want to play, if not in your life then in 's: The band that makes the records you clutch to your chest like a prep-school misfit in a 1980s movie, the band that cuts out the construction-paper heart you wear on your sleeve. They make records that get down on their knees and beg to get quoted in someone's yearbook.