Chicago-based funk band Bumpus has been down many paths trying to find the music it wants to play and is taking another route in hopes of finding its distinct sound.

After releasing three albums and re-inventing themselves on a couple of occasions, the band members are getting back to what they wanted to be in the beginning: a funk band.

“When we first got together, most of the guys didn’t even play the instruments they play now,” lead singer James Johnson says.

“Both of the horns on bass just picked up the instruments when we first started, and we just got lucky that they all had it in them.”

After the release of their self-titled album in 1999, the band strayed from an attempt to emulate its funk influences, which include bands such as Parliament Funkadelic, Sly Stone and Prince.

“After ‘Stereoscope’ we didn’t really know what we were,” Johnson says. “We made ‘Stereoscope’ like a mix-tape, so there was a lot of different types of music to it. But we’ve gone back to the music we set out to make with some newer influences also.”

This time, the change in the band’s sound comes from influences from newer groups, Johnson says, such as Radiohead, Bjork and singer-songwriters such as Damien Wright and Rufus Wainwright on it two new EPs in production.

“Three of us went to a Radiohead concert at Alpine Valley last year, and after that, we only listened to Radiohead for, like, three months,” Johnson says. “But we also wanted to get back to the songwriting portion of making a record, and we feel it will show on our new EPs.”

The band decided to release two EPs since each EP demonstrates a different kind of sound.

“When we got to recording, we found that we were playing different kinds of songs, so we decided to split them up so they wouldn’t detract from each other,” Johnson says.

He says the differences are noticeable.

“The first one is pretty funky and more of a throwback, and the second is more spacey-sounding. It would have a lot of different music for one EP”

Along with the new EPs, the band will be releasing an election-inspired single, “Something’s Got to Give,” in early October in hopes of inspiring more people to vote.

“We really just want to see more people get out to vote,” Johnson says.