For more than a decade, Wye Oak was a band that flourished within limitations. As a duo, Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack shaped their songs with an eye towards practicality: Stack played drums with one hand and synth with the other, while Wasner sang and alternated among keys, bass, and guitar. But as they began to to make their excellent new album, The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs, Wasner and Stack realized that the structures that had once encouraged their creativity were actually getting in their way.

So they decided to break their own rules, bringing in backing players for bolder arrangements that showcase the band’s technical prowess. The delights of The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs indeed lie in its multitudes and moving parts, from the stippled synth of “The Instrument” to the coolly rippling reverberations of “Lifer.” For the first time in five albums, the songs actually necessitate a third member, bassist Will Hackney, to help bring them to life on stage.

“This record was the first time we both felt like we had reached the height of our capabilities, as far as playing, producing, and being able to realize our ideas,” Wasner tells Pitchfork.

One thing that remains central to the Wye Oak sound, though, is how defining a role Wasner’s eternally empathetic lyrics play. Coming off her first solo album as Flock of Dimes, Wasner returns to her primary project with a masterful balance of vulnerability and fearlessness, her vocals alternating between soothing reassurances and confident affirmations. For her, the opposing modes are of a piece, connected in art as much as life.

In Durham, North Carolina, Wye Oak’s new hometown, Wasner sat down to discuss the duo’s development and why asking for help can feel so daunting.

Pitchfork: You didn’t necessarily take a break from Wye Oak to do Flock of Dimes, but I’m curious if working on a solo project made space in some way for the new Wye Oak material.

Jenn Wasner: I emerged from making that Flock of Dimes record infinitely better, with so many lessons learned. There’s no way I could’ve made or written any of the stuff on this new record [without it]. Specifically setting out to do something on my own changed the way that I think about the music I make. As much as doing everything yourself sounds really great, it’s also very, very difficult. There were a lot of collaborators on my record, but to be the one person that every decision comes back to can be pretty overwhelming. It’s always going to be part of my life and creative output to have things like that, but at the same time, it really made me grateful for the musical vocabulary that Andy and I have built up over the course of the last decade.

What are the specific ways in which Andy’s skill set complements your own?

Andy and I have known each other for so long, so we have a pretty solid working shorthand, creatively, for what we’re looking for, which is really something that you can only build up with time. Andy is, in pretty much every way, a better instrumentalist than I am. That’s helpful to me as someone who, if I hit upon an idea that I can’t execute quite as well, he usually can. I am an empath—my relationship to the songs is very personal and very emotionally linked. And Andy is a technician, at least in regards to this band. Before we figured out these things about ourselves and about each other, it would occasionally manifest as a problem, but now it has become much more of a comfort and a grounding thing.

To me, the title of the record resonates as how, sometimes the more you want something, the harder it is to get it. What are your thoughts on that?

You just actually volunteered yourself for the litmus test that I usually give. You picked the one that Andy heard when I told him the title, but my idea was actually, “I’m calling for help, but the louder I call, the easier it is for what is coming for me to find me.” It was this interesting thing where people have two different reactions to what it means, whether you are the chaser or the one being chased. I think that’s such an interesting little test to delve into peoples’ psychological landscapes.