[1] The remaining three tracks – "The Flower Called Nowhere", "Prisoner of Mars", and "Contronatura" – were recorded the following month at Academy of St. Martin in the Street in Düsseldorf, this time with co-production, co-mixing, and engineering duties overseen by Andi Toma.

[5] Barney Hoskyns of Rolling Stone found that the album continued Stereolab's progression towards a lighter sound that he termed "avant-easy listening",[6] while Michelle Goldberg of Metro referred to it as the band's "lounge apotheosis".

[7] Treble writer Jeff Terich noted the "more lush" quality of the music on Dots and Loops compared to Stereolab's previous work, characterising it as "gorgeously orchestrated" art pop.

[10] According to Sophie Kemp of Vice, Dots and Loops is informed by Stereolab's "ideology" of "tackling both despotism and exploring the artistic boundaries of living by capitalism", with the album seeing the band's chief lyricist Lætitia Sadier commenting on "different fears about the world in every track".

[11] Kemp found that these themes are complemented by the album's "sprightly spirit", interpreting the "serene" quality of the music as "a very topical critique on the numbness of society and how the more comfortable we get with capitalism, the more jaded we become to pain and suffering.

[10] "Miss Modular" is built on a two-chord pattern augmented by brass arranged by Sean O'Hagan, and finds Tim Gane using the guitar "as a percussive element" to complement Andy Ramsay's drumming.

[10] "Prisoner of Mars", the album's fifth track, has been described as "an Astrud Gilberto-style dreamy drift of a ditty which sporadically yanks up its swooshing skirt of sumptuous melody to reveal ultra-spartan techno-rhumba undercarriage.

"[15] "Refractions in the Plastic Pulse" is a four-part 17-minute track that begins with "all murky vibes, flat Farfisa pads, bossa-nova guitar and Brian Wilson bass",[6] then "mutat[es] into snarled-up space-rock and metallic junglism – then back to its jaunty original refrain.

[14] A remastered and expanded edition of Dots and Loops, featuring a second disc containing demos and instrumental mixes of the album's songs, was released on 13 September 2019 by Duophonic and Warp as part of Stereolab's back catalogue reissue campaign.

[27][28][29] Reviewing Dots and Loops in 1997, The Guardian's Kathy Sweeney considered the album a successful move towards a more accessible and "pop-conscious" sound, with Stereolab's "avant-garde tendencies and atonal drone of old supplanted by breezy harmonies and, wait for it, tunes.

"[30] NME writer Stephen Dalton stated that the band "have never sounded so comfortable in a pop setting than on Dots and Loops", which he deemed "both more accessible and more adventurous" than their previous album Emperor Tomato Ketchup.

[15] Terri Sutton of Spin praised the music as Stereolab's "most audacious" to date,[13] and Los Angeles Times critic Lorraine Ali commented that the band "continues to revitalize Muzak for the '90s.

[40] In his retrospective review of the album for Pitchfork, Eric Harvey praised Dots and Loops as Stereolab's "peak", finding them "embracing the bleeding edge of digital studio technology" and creating "a work both of its moment and […] that seems to hover outside everything else."

"[9] In Vice, Sophie Kemp called Dots and Loops "a major milestone in the world of experimental pop, and within Stereolab's expansive discography", deeming it the band's "most sonically accessible and politically important record.