The 1980s, the decade that launched the edgy style of pop music that was eventually dubbed “new wave,” has time-warped one of its signature bands smack dab into the present day.

DEVO — familiar as much for its quirky look as for hits like "Whip It," "Girl U Want" and "Freedom of Choice" — is back together with 4 of its 5 original members and on tour to support "Something For Everybody," its first studio album in 20 years.

DEVO — Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh and Gerald and Bob Casale, joined by drummer Josh Freese (Nine Inch Nails, Guns n' Roses) — comes to Power Center Tuesday night as part of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival.

"It was now or never," said Gerald Casale. "We’re all still alive, and we can all play and sing — probably better than we ever did in the past. … I’m glad to have this shot and be back with a voice in the marketplace for a change.”

They’ve been busy promoting the release with appearances on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” “The Colbert Report” and even the decidedly mainstream “Live With Regis & Kelly.”

The new CD finds DEVO working with hot producers John Hill and Santi White (from Santigold) and the Dust Brothers' John King. The new songs — some with a techno edge, others with a classic ‘80s new-wave feel — sound as much like DEVO as anything the band recorded in the past, said Casale.

“We’re all more DEVO than ever,” he observed.

DEVO’s name is shorthand for "de-evolution," which is how its members felt three decades ago about the direction society was heading — downhill. If anything, Casale said by phone from his Santa Monica, Calif., home, things are just getting worse.

“If someone in 1980 had shown you a crystal ball and said ‘I am going to show you a montage from the year 2000 to the year 2010,’ would you have even believed it? I think you would have thought it was a bad, B-level, sci-fi movie dystopia designed to scare you, starting with some fundamentalist in a cave somewhere holding the whole Western world hostage while all these technologically advanced rich people cower in fear.

“And by the way, the (Gulf oil) spill — is that a ‘spill?’ I came from a large family and I watched my little brothers and sisters ‘spill’ their milk. I can tell you, that’s not a spill. That thing is a cauldron, an eternal fountain of filth spewing straight out of the earth. It’s the ultimate wake up call to Western values.” Casale said.

Although the band seems to be best known for the 1980 album “Freedom of Choice,” on which “Whip It” appears (remember the group’s radiation suits and red “energy dome” hats that resembled upside-down flowerpots?), the group was formed in Akron, Ohio, in 1973. It gained a bit of early fame when the short film "The Truth About De-Evolution" won a prize at the 1976 Ann Arbor Film Festival. Its first album, 1978’s “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO!,” was produced by Brian Eno and included minor hits "Mongoloid" and a cover of the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."

“Something for Everybody” is the band’s ninth CD, its first since 1990s “Smooth Noodle Maps.”

“Something for Everybody” reveals a CD that seems to pick up where the band left off 2 decades ago. According to Billboard magazine, the recording has “a contemporary fullness and distortion in the album's production that updates DEVO's sound without sacrificing its unmistakable essence.”

“I do feel we were able to seamlessly segue, cutting out 20 years of time and then just hooking it back together,” Casale said. “As soon as we started writing again … the collaboration was on, and oddly enough we sounded like DEVO again.”

DEVO never officially broke up, but came together occasionally for special concerts and film recordings.

The band’s longtime label, Warner Bros., was delighted to get new material from DEVO, said Casale, because the buzz around such an event generates sales of the band’s past albums. If that sounds like a chance to reinvent — and even cash in on — the DEVO brand, he added, then so be it.

“In this culture, it’s all about marketing,” he said. “Marketing is the beginning and the end. That’s all that’s left because, first of all, people don’t seem to really know what they want or why they want it, but they are shown something enough times then they believe they want it.

“With 10,000 CDs a month coming out from every band with a MySpace and Facebook page, there’s a glut of music that no one, no matter how much they love music, could possibly digest. So given that picture, how do you even know a band like DEVO has new music out and if you do know, why should you even care? And that’s all branding and marketing, trying to get the message out that defines what this is any why you should be interested,” he added.

Summer Festival Director Robb Woulfe said that when he found out the band was touring, he knew they would be a perfect fit for the Summer Festival’s eclectic lineup.

“They are truly art rock iconoclasts … plus, I love the fact that they have a longstanding connection to Ann Arbor dating back to an association to the Ann Arbor Film Festival in the mid-‘70s, so it's really fun to bring them back to town. Some of our ushers are even planning to wear red flowerpot hats. Now that's entertainment,” he said.

Note: Martin Bandyke will interview DEVO's Mark Mothersbaugh on his "Fine Tuning" program, at 4 p.m. Sunday, July 4 on WQKL (107.1-FM). Says Martin, "Mark shares some fun memories about the band's friendship with Iggy Pop and first gig in Michigan, which took place in 1978 at the Punch & Judy Theater in Grosse Pointe Farms."


Roger LeLievre is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com.

Watch the pilot of DEVO's five-episode reality series, "DEVO Makes Something For Everybody" (updated on Tuesdays on DEVO's YouTube channel).