Silversun Pickups' origins, and eventually songs, spawned from a live stage setting - namely small clubs on the eastside of Los Angeles. They toyed with sound, tried out line-ups, pondered even being a band... then songs materialized. And bloomed. EP Pikul, came next, followed by Carnavas, all written on stage.

Today, with experience in tow and innumerable frequent flyer miles logged, the quartet is taking a new approach to recording. "As of right now this record is very different because we've written everything at once. The first one was very much scraping together a lot of the songs we've written over the years," explains Aubert. He continues, "For Carnavas, because we were coming off of Pikul, we stripped it of the organics, got rid of the strings and warmer sounds. Now that we are jumping off from Carnavas we are putting some of that stuff back."

New flourishes, such as string arrangements or horns may emerge on Swoon, yet Aubert admits to actually screaming more on this album. "So far you can hear that we are letting songs tackle elements by themselves. It doesn't need to get quiet here because we'll have another song that will cover that. Doing that, we could really go into writing some really quiet things and in the same respects very loud things. Even the heavier stuff on this record is much more moody and it's really fun to be able to explore that," he adds.

Dave Cooley, the man behind the soundboard for Carnavas, was once again the chosen one to produce. "The tension is still there. We approached this like the first album where we did one song with him to see if we wanted to work together and it was like the first time," Aubert recalls. It soon became clear to all involved; a reunion was inevitable. "He's a stronger producer now because of the records he's done since we worked with him on Carnavas. And as far as experimenting with sounds and everything, he's just as great as ever."