As you can hear the sirens in the background, this is a record inspired by New York City.

We wrote and recorded almost all of the record right here, right here in this room.

In the past, we've gone to studios that have had more traditional layouts where there's like an isolation booth and a control room.

One thing we really wanted to do in here was have all the instruments tracked live in the room,

so everyone who's in the room is paying attention

and effectively contributing their energy to the take, whether it is a vocal or drums.

So there's no separation.

So vocal takes were, you know, often done right next to whoever is sitting at the computer.

I think the saxophone was one of the first things that we recorded in here.

"We use to have a piano in here."

Having the door opened by an artist like Beyonce to us, especially where we were after our last record, was a total perspective change for us.

It sort of just changed our sense of what is possible in the music industry right now.

How much everyone is mixing...

How all the sort of rules that people use to sort-of go by are gone, if not just broken.

And so that was sort of the mental starting place for us with this record.

It was like "Okay, there are no boundaries. There's no such thing as 'indie' versus 'mainstream' versus 'pop' versus 'experimental.'

It's all sort of one thing now, which was really sort of inspiring starting place.

We're borrowing a microphone from our friend Ben Goldwasser.

He said, "Yeah, test it out. See what you think of it!"

And we borrowed it and we just tracked one scream in it. And as a sort of joke, emailed him the scream.