Ernest Greene of Washed Out actually sounds like he’s enjoying himself for the first time.

Washed Out (really the stage name of Georgia native Ernest Greene) makes cool music, the sort of dreamy chillwave that sounds like slowly climbing out of a swimming pool or taking an ecstasy-fueled road trip to Portland (in fact, Washed Out may best be known for “Feel It All Around,” the trippy theme song to Portlandia).

Washed Out’s second album, Paracosm, doesn’t mark a particularly drastic departure from its debut, 2011’s very good Within and Without. It’s certainly as cool, at any rate.

Like Within and Without, Paracosm finds Greene flirting with atmospheric dream pop, situated about halfway between the minimalist ambiance of The XX and the Afro-pop electronica of Tanlines. But where Washed Out’s first album could be cool to the point of seeming icy (like the sonic equivalent of window-shopping in an unwelcoming Armani store), Paracosm finds the musician layering genuine warmth into the waves of tank-top cool. Take lead single “It All Feels Right,” which adds strummy guitars and real percussion to the usual layers of electronic fuzz, all set around Greene’s dreamy late-summer, early Beach Boys lyrics (“Leaving heading eastbound/ Weekend’s almost here now/ It’s getting warmer outside/ It all feels right”).

“Falling Back” is similarly joyous. Infused with bells and swelling guitars, it delivers the sort of anthemic feel-good catharsis that wouldn’t sound out of place on a record from The Temper Trap. Meanwhile, “Don’t Give Up” plays like a deliberately less pretentious sequel to “Feel It All Around,” bursting with chaotic yelling, whooping and crowd chatter before building into a vaguely Caribbean groove.

Elsewhere, Paracosm finds Greene in full-on experimental mode, flirting with the analog sounds of the ’90s. On “Great Escape,” he even plays with a rattling drum machine that calls to mind early N.W.A.

That’s the real sign of growth between Within and Without and Paracosm: Where his debut felt at times too self-conscious or cool for its own good, Paracosm, for much of its running time, feels like Greene is genuinely having fun. From the tropical birds that cap off “Falling Back” to the ’80s power-ballad pastiche of album closer “All Over Now,” Paracosm sounds like a do-it-yourself artist gradually coming to terms with — and moving past — his own self-consciousness and need to impress. And that’s pretty cool.

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