Regardless of who you talk to, Steely Dan was the bee’s knees. It was the sparkling guitars, man. The sparkling guitars and a whole bunch of other stuff: production quality, general grooviness and vibes for miles in every direction. Donald Fagen was a genius. All of this is in the past tense, because Steely Dan kind of sucks now.

Regardless of the current state of Steely Dan, whose live show on the Mood Swings Tour 2013 probably serves as an official alternative to waterboarding in the “This is How You Torture People” guidelines of at least seven major nations (complete with now-balding Fagen in garish horn-rimmed glasses), the groove is not dead. I mean, it is not Steely Dan’s fault; they are just not relevant anymore. But someone is.

Enter Mac DeMarco, Canadian superfreak and leader of the free world. He basically took the aesthetic of Steely Dan, with all the near-disturbingly smooth edges, seamless vocal melody transitions and, of course, dear-Jesus guitar butter slathered over everything and resurrected a modern semi-ironic take on the classic masters who gave us “Aja,” for whatever that is worth now.

The hooks, man. It all comes down to the hooks. Standout tracks on DeMarco’s only full-length, “2,” include “Freaking Out the Neighborhood,” “Ode to Viceroy” and “My Kind of Woman.” The hooks in these songs are like the time you won your first chess tournament, the time you nearly suffocated in your plastic sheets after a particularly tumultuous night and the time you encountered a minotaur in the wilderness: completely unforgettable.

So, a word to the wise. Check out Mac DeMarco at Fun Fun Fun Fest. He will be killing it. I mean, quite literally, murdering it, so watch out and stay safe out there, guys.