Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	76/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
The A.V. Club	B−
Clash	8/10
NME	8/10
The Observer
Pitchfork Media	7.9/10
PopMatters
Rolling Stone
Spin	7/10
Tiny Mix Tapes

Era Extraña is the second studio album by American electronic music band Neon Indian. Recorded in the winter of 2010–11 during Palomo's visit to Finland, it was released on September 7, 2011 by Static Tongues and Mom + Pop Music. Containing influences and elements of psychedelic pop, shoegaze, and new wave, the break-up album has the same sound and summer-y feel that was on the band's debut studio album Psychic Chasms, but with a darker and more serious tone. The record was generally well received by critics, with some reviewers calling it more focused, tight and cohesive than Psychic Chasms and some praising the song crafting. However, there were some mixed reviews disliking that the album lost much of the charm that was on Chasms. The album peaked at number 74 on the American Billboard 200, and was the project's first release to appear on the chart.

The album was recorded during the winter of 2010–11 at Kalevankatu 45 in Helsinki, Finland, where frontman Alan Palomo was living for four weeks. Palomo primarily wrote the album using a Voyetra 8, a Korg MS-20 and a modified Commodore 64, and the first weeks of him making the album in Helsinki involved him learning this equipment. Palomo first saw the Voyetra 8 in the music video for New Order's "The Perfect Kiss", saying that he was amazed by the appearance of it: "It's this bizarre, kaleidoscope interface with these knobs, and it's really physical to use, a strange kind of challenge." Palomo's songwriting on Era Extraña was influenced from his live performances more so than his previous projects, saying that he had never expected to perform his songs live before: "It was an influence; not so much something that limited me, but a feeling that lead to longer, more soundscape-driven songs. That was something that was undeniably in my mind: ‘what would I want to be playing every night for eight months?’ And the album evolved from there."

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