If you’re a reasonably plugged-in music fan and haven’t heard of Chanel Beads yet, this is probably the last year where that will be normal. The NYC-based project of Shane Lavers (and friends) is currently somewhere between a breakthrough and a victory lap that has seen them rocket from if-you-know-you-know scene darlings to opening for Lorde on a stadium tour. How many artists can say they played Baby’s All Right (capacity 280) and Madison Square Garden (19,500) within the same calendar year?

As unlikely as this ascent seems, it sounds even less likely when you hear the music. (Note: this is a compliment.) You’d be forgiven for assuming that, like fellow Dimes Square breakout star The Dare (with whom they shared that Baby’s All Right bill), Chanel Beads must make sadistically catchy mall-ready pop that just needed an appropriately ginormous stage. You would, however, be egregiously wrong. In contrast to a typical stadium act’s lighters-up hooks and thunderous bass lines, the music of Chanel Beads feels impressionistic, elusive, even unfinished. Acoustic guitars that may as well have been recorded in the next room nearly drown out vocal lines (sung by a combination of Lavers and bandmate Maya McGrory) that fall somewhere between aggressive sing-song and non-committal rapping. Sometimes the songs have choruses. Often, they have minute-long instrumental breaks led by isolated samples of the London Philharmonic. This is not the sound of pop ambition. It’s the sound of creative limitations.

How did this happen? Lavers’ musical education, like many suburban kids in the early Aughts, came from torrent sites, where an indiscriminate grab bag of references paved the way for his found object collage pop. He bounced around the Seattle music scene after college, piecing bits of audio together until an epiphanic jam session altered the trajectory of his life. He realized, somewhat all at once, that he didn’t know how to write songs. So he set about teaching himself, choosing specific chords and specific lyrics to ground the samples and soundscapes that he favored. After moving to New York, one of those songs, “Ef,” started to connect. Fans, artists, and critics took notice. The shows got a little busier and a lot buzzier. When Chanel Beads’ debut album, “Your Day Will Come” arrived in April of last year on Bon Iver’s Jagjaguwar label, cosigns from Pigeons and Planes and Pitchfork followed shortly and cosigns from Lorde and Billie Eilish followed some time later.

For many artists, this would be the point at which the budgets get bigger, the music videos get glossier, the press shoots get flashier, and the stage show gets polished to a sheen. That is not what has happened. Chanel Beads’ latest single, “The Coward Forgets His Nightmare” is a direct continuation of the aesthetic path that has taken them this far. Though the track would have been one of the poppier cuts on “Your Day Will Come,” all the calling cards are still there: the faraway vocals, the washy guitars, the digital rough edges, the winking sentimentality. The music video consists of hilariously grainy footage of a drum kit on a modestly lit sidewalk at night. No one plays the drums. If there’s a mainstream pivot on the way, Lavers isn’t telegraphing it. Instead, he seems poised to let the mainstream continue to flow towards him, doing things his own DIY, lovingly janky way. On the biggest stage of his life, at the self-proclaimed most famous venue in the world, Shane Lavers is dancing with the one who brought him.

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