Michael Bissett's muse is Liza, his dog, who in the early days of his relationship with his now-girlfriend took to shadowing him around the flat, room to room, orbiting him like a small, furry moon. Bissett has said he wrote the opening lines as a joke to make his girlfriend laugh and finished the whole thing in about a quarter of an hour. That sounds like a boast, but it is also the song's best advertisement. Songs written in a quarter of an hour tend to have the bloom of a good idea caught before it could be overthought, and this one has it.

It begins quietly. Bissett sings in a low, confiding voice over synths that drift in from some distant, vaguely cosmic place, the sort of sound that suggests a transmission from a lonely probe. For a minute you could be listening to a bedroom ballad made at three in the morning with a cup of tea going cold. Then the band lurch into gear and the song turns into a chugging, good-natured rocker, all churning guitars and forward motion. The shift could have felt like two songs stapled together. Instead it lands as a pleasure, the musical equivalent of a dog who hears the word "walk" and goes from a snoozing heap to a blur of limbs by the front door.

Bissett is a frontman in the old, generous tradition, a man who would rather win a room over than lord it over one. The band have built their name on wit, hooks and a showman's instinct for the big gesture, and all three are present here. What keeps the song from collapsing into cuteness is his tenderness. He serenades Liza, imagines the two of them singing along to Neil Young records, and wonders whether she dreams of her owners. It is a lovely, slightly daft conceit, and he plays it straight enough that the sweetness feels earned. Dogs, after all, are the one audience guaranteed never to heckle.

The choice of Young as the imagined soundtrack is a neat piece of scene-setting. It places the pair on a sofa in a London flat, a tired man and an attentive animal, listening to something weathered and honest. It also quietly confesses the band's own debts, and their wish that a song can be heartfelt without being humourless.

The timing is shrewd as well. The previous single, *2 Vexed 2 Tired*, found the band lamenting the burnout of modern life, and it was a fine, frayed-nerve piece of work. *Me and My Satellite* is its warm-blooded opposite, a record that answers exhaustion with affection and a wagging tail. Heard together, the two singles make a more interesting portrait of the band than either would alone: people who know the world is wearing them out and who have found, in a patient dog, a reason to keep going. Bissett's girlfriend, who got the first laugh out of this song, has plenty to be proud of.

Uncanny Valley Girls headline the Strongrooms in Shoreditch on 29 October to celebrate the release. Expect a crowd singing every word, and at least one person quietly wondering whether their own dog dreams of them. *Me and My Satellite* is the sound of a band at ease with themselves, and it is a joy.