Some things about Golomb feel preordained — as if their backstory was dictated by fate, as if their music has always existed. Not that they stumbled into their current upward trajectory. The Columbus power trio, who’ll make their debut on Philly’s esteemed No Quarter Records next month with sophomore album The Beat Goes On, have worked their asses off to write songs this potent and broadcast them to an audience far beyond their local scene. But from the origins to the output, it all seems meant to be.

Golomb are a family band. They’re a teenage love story. They’re yet another creative endeavor accelerated by the pandemic. They have, in broad and specific ways, been nurtured by their forebears. It’s all led to songs like “Staring,” their new single released today, a battering ram built from crystalline guitar noise and sandblasted vocal harmonies, described by singer-guitarist Mickey Shuman as “the most us-sounding song we’ve ever made.”

Mickey and bassist/vocalist Xenia Shuman are 26 and married now, but they started Golomb as teens entranced by the late 2010s Columbus music scene. Mickey had been playing guitar in a live-band hip-hop act called Stems. Xenia fronted a dreamy, garage-y indie band called Cherry Chrome. After a couple years of dating, they started a new project together, a noisy rock band sweetened by the harmonized singing Xenia taught Mickey early on. They gigged and recorded a bit with Stems’ Zach Pennington on drums, and then it was off to California.

In 2019, Mickey had a job lined up in Los Angeles with the trendy clothing company Online Ceramics. He’d worked at a Columbus coffee shop with co-founder Elijah Funk — who did the back cover design for The Beat Goes On — and figured a gig tie-dying T-shirts was a good enough excuse to move to LA. It was, but the West Coast dalliance was short-lived due to COVID-19. The pandemic sent Mickey and Xenia scurrying back to Columbus to move in with Xenia’s parents, David Holm and Melanie Bleveans Holm, who’ve been playing in Columbus rock bands of their own for decades. (Golomb’s members believe one of those parental bands, the well-regarded but under-documented Bigfoot, deserves a high-profile reissue campaign — get in touch, Numero Group!)

Quarantining at the Holm household, Mickey and Xenia began to jam with her younger brother, Hawken Holm, on drums. With Hawken, now 22, in the fold, Golomb spent the lockdown era woodshedding in the basement. They emerged a formidable unit, ready to take their local scene by storm. By the time their self-titled debut album dropped in 2022, Golomb had become one of the buzziest bands in their hometown. But they had ambitions far beyond Columbus.

Mickey’s second cousin once removed is Nathan Salsburg, the acclaimed folk guitarist, composer, and archivist who lives on a Kentucky farm with his wife and frequent collaborator, the brilliant singer-songwriter Joan Shelley. (Mickey calls their life situation “aspirational.”) While shopping around last year’s Love EP to labels, Mickey asked Salsburg to put him in touch with Mike Quinn, the proprietor of No Quarter. One of Quinn’s coworkers had also gone to college with Xenia and Hawken’s parents and had been talking up Golomb to him. No Quarter wasn’t in the market for an EP, but when The Beat Goes On came along, Quinn was understandably smitten.

The new Golomb album goes hard. Recorded with the veteran Columbus producer Keith Hanlon at the longstanding local studio Musicol, The Beat Goes On is both raw and streamlined, wrangling cataclysmic sounds into straightforward structures and topping them off with those gorgeous Mickey-Xenia vocals. Xenia says they aimed to make “something that sounded kind of classic but also new and different.” Mission accomplished.

Songs like lead single “Real Power” brim with a ragged energy culled from retro touchstones — the swaggering grit of the Rolling Stones, the droning leftfield pop of the Velvet Underground — infused with electrifying harmonies reminiscent of Pixies or Yo La Tengo. There’s an elemental quality to many tracks, as if the band has boiled down the music to its essential form. Yet even at their most familiar and direct — even when venturing into reggae on “Other Side Of The Earth” or country on closer “Sweet Release (Ain’t No Devil)” — Golomb have an unmistakable sonic signature.

On a lyrical level, too, The Beat Goes On cuts to the heart of the matter. They tend to sing about elation, desperation, inspiration — intense, relatable longings, and not just on the song called “Experience Humanness.” Often, they present music — or music plus substances, or music plus sex, or music plus community — as a cure for what ails. That philosophy animates the pounding, sweltering title track, and it’s breathed into the volatile slow-burn “Dog.” “I’m gonna listen to Let It Bleed/ I want you to give me shelter,” the Shumans sing together, and soon a desolate swoon has erupted into clamor. For the Timothy Leary-misquoting “Be Here Now” (not an Oasis reference), they brought a community of friends into the studio to subtly color the edges of a song about how in hostile and confusing times, societal change can start on a personal and interpersonal level. “People forget to be genuine and kind and themselves,” Mickey says.

“Play Music,” a swaying roots-rock ditty propelled as if by a raging river, finds Golomb expressing the desire to create something profound and prismatic. “I wanna play music that gives you a part of me/ I wanna play music that when I play it I can see,” Mickey sings. “I wanna play music that makes me feel so good/ I wanna play music that when you heard it, you thought you understood/ But you didn’t.” It’s a tribute to the search for transcendence, and half a decade after they wrote it, Golomb are getting there.

The Beat Goes On is out 7/25 on No Quarter.