Following a winning support slot on Bat For Lashes' recent tour, Matt Grimble chats with Yeasayer.

"We met in Amsterdam. We were touring with Beck, she was touring with Radiohead" recounts shamanic frontman Chris Keating of the auspicious circumstances under which Yeasayer first hooked up with Bat For Lashes, eventually earning them percussion duties on her most recent album, Two Suns, and the support slot of her current UK tour.

Their 2007 debut All Hour Cymbals confounded critics with its frequent left-turns and myriad influences, but at the heart of it was a sinisterly upbeat response to the direction they saw the world heading in. The new tracks performed tonight take on a significantly unburdened vibe, with the four strictly on the floor.

"We wanted to make the last record all ambient, and influenced by a lot of folk music from the ë60s and ambient music from the '70s. Maybe our world view was a little pessimistic. On this record, we really wanted to be inspired by a lot of reggaeton music, with lots of dub and soul influences. We were into a lot of club music from all over the world, and we wanted to try and incorporate that with a lot of the new wave vibe that we were digging, slow disco shit," says Chris.

"We figured we'd exorcised those demons from the last record, and I think you should always keep moving. I don't think it's very exciting when a band keeps making the same record. A lot of people make a record that's the same dudes playing the same instruments and creating the same sounds, only this time it's just about a different girl."

Once again, the band have used their DIY approach to ensure their bounding creative freedom is not stifled in the production of their new record.

"We rented a house that belonged to an old drummer for Peter Gabriel and Hall & Oates in upstate New York, built a studio with a load of old gear and then got an engineer to come up with us - he's an engineer for Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem, and he did some Beastie Boys records back in the day. It sounds more like a real record than our last one sounded; that one was washy, weird and experimental, whereas this one's much more like a pop record. We've just shot a video and it's going to be crazy - we shot it with a 360 degree camera, and you can be fully interactive, it's going to be sick. "

Their live incarnation has recently grown to a five piece, with triggered samples firing against traditional percussion filling the hall with commanding rhythms.

"When we made the record it was just the three of us up on the farm, and we wrote all the songs.  There's a lot of percussion and a lot of polyrhythms on the new record, a lot of beat-heavy shit. We wanted to incorporate that into the live set and i'm really happy with the way this is working out now."

The band have emerged from a quintessentially Brooklyn scene, birthing the likes of Dirty Projectors, MGMT and Man Man. This is more than mere good fortune.

"To me, Brooklyn's home and I'm really happy there right now; we couldn't really exist anywhere else. There's a very diverse, very supportive community - whether you play to 50 or 2000 people, everyone still hangs out together."

If tonight's performance is anything to go by, Yeasayer may have just recorded one of 2010's most promising and exciting records. Miss their UK headline shows in the new year at your peril.