New Jersey dream-pop band San Tropez have never seemed particularly interested in taking the most direct route from one place to another. On their third album, Exit Through the Gift Shop, they turn that tendency inward, revisiting material connected to their first two records and rearranging the pieces into something that exists somewhere between a compilation, an alternate history, and a new album.

Across eight tracks, Exit Through the Gift Shop brings together remixes, live recordings, a cover, a demo, and a previously unreleased alternate version. Rather than presenting these songs as leftovers or archival curiosities, San Tropez use them to reconsider the path connecting 2023's Maybe Tomorrow and 2025's Museum of Modern History.

"We didn't really think of this as a rarities record," says bassist Frank Bridges. "The idea was more like taking pieces of our history and putting them back together in a different order. It's not about what might have happened. All of this happened—we're just looking at it from another angle."

That approach is immediately apparent on the album's opening track, "The Oval (Milestar Mix)," a new reimagining by Skot Kremen, whose work includes You Shriek, Model Behavior, Project Sphere, and Provocateur. The remix pulls familiar material into a different sonic space while preserving the hazy, cinematic quality that has increasingly defined San Tropez.

For guitarist and vocalist Albie Connelly, that sense of rediscovery became part of the appeal. "Once a song has been finished and released, you tend to think of it as settled," Connelly says. "Coming back to these recordings reminded us that they can still change depending on where you put them and how you hear them."

That idea feels particularly appropriate following Museum of Modern History, an album that expanded the band's American dream-pop palette with contributions from Marissa Paternoster, Zack Sandler, and Victoria Benesch. Rebel Noise previously described its first single, "Swear Off the Sunlight," as a "sublime collision of isolation and spectacle."

With Exit Through the Gift Shop, San Tropez aren't closing the book on their first two albums. They're pulling pages from both, shuffling them, and discovering that the story reads differently the second time around.