As much as I’d like to say otherwise, I don’t always follow through on friends’ music recommendations. No matter how hard they might push, often it’s a case of having too many other tunes competing for my attention so their suggestions are filed away somewhere in my mental stack. Sometimes it takes years, but there are only so many hours…

Back in 2001, a friend tried to turn me on to the Norwegian electronica duo, Röyksopp. Today I can’t recall exactly why I wasn’t interested, and actually that friend and I went our separate ways not long after (due not to divergent musical tastes, but rather his inclination for total inebriation and a disregard for personal space and good manners).

But when Röyksopp released its third album, Junior, earlier this year, I picked it up, largely because of a single guest shot from my favorite Swede, Robyn. “The Girl And The Robot,” which sounds like it was ghostwritten by the Pet Shop Boys, is the story of a woman frustrated by her workaholic lover who’s rarely around. Released as the second single from Junior, the song includes a shout-out to MTV, as if these silly Scandinavians believe that the once-mighty music video channel could possibly be persuaded to play any clip, let alone one featuring a robot tending to Robyn’s garden and the results of a home pregnancy test (ah, metaphors!):

“The Girl And The Robot” isn’t the only reason to recommend Junior. For one, there’s the Parliament-sampling opener, “Happy Up Here,” and besides Robyn, other guest vocalists include Anneli Drecker (Bel Canto), Karen Dreijer Andersson (The Knife, Fever Ray), and Lykke Li. And the album’s instrumentals mustn’t be overlooked, like the movie score-like “Röyksopp Forever” and the gorgeous, Boards-Of-Canada-by-way-of-The-Cure mood piece, “Silver Cruiser.”

Later this year, the Röyksopp boys plan to release a companion album to Junior, smartly titled Senior.

Purchase Röyksopp featuring Robyn – “The Girl And The Robot” (plus remixes!) via iTunes, Amazon MP3.