Hiatus Kaiyote are having the least relaxing of post-show experiences. They're in Austin, Texas - having just completed their set at Banger's (a restaurant famed for its selection of 30 homemade sausages) that's been taken over by P Diddy's TV company. The super tight level of security makes for an unusual setting, particularly for a band whose smooth strokes of soul, indulgent hip-hop and bass noodling encourage you to melt into a dreamlike state. Crammed into a back office minutes after leaving the stage, there's a steady stream of interruptions; people yelling into phones, crew members collecting equipment and a rampant (though welcome) muddy dog.

The Melbourne four-piece - consisting of Nai Palm on vocals and guitar, Paul Bender on bass, Simon Mavin on keys and Perrin Moss on drums - manage to remain surprisingly chill in the face of all this. Maybe it's the fact that they're flying to Brazil tomorrow, still high off the yellow fever they've recently been injected with. But most likely it's because they've been playing an hour of tunes from upcoming LP 'Choose Your Weapon' to a crowd who've braved the elements. "The fact that people are standing in the rain watching you play is pretty cool," Nai Palm admits.

The quartet have quietly enjoyed a series of accolades - a Grammy nomination for debut album 'Tawk Tomahawk', a collaboration with Q-Tip, while they can also count Prince, Erykah Badu, D'Angelo and Questlove as admirers of theirs. Aside from supreme tastemakers, though, there doesn't seem to be a typical Hiatus Kaiyote fan. "We did one set in Philly and there was this 8 year-old in a glitter T-shirt with her eyes shut at the front, she was just vibing the whole set. We have 70 year-olds headbanging, moshing to our shit, which was been really weird and awesome!" smiles Nai.

Not so much an album rather than a odyssey, 'Choose Your Weapon' ( REVIEW ) is "70 plus minutes of hectic-ness," according to Bender; "a sequence of mini movies of different worlds." But, they admit, they'd be happy not to hear it again for at least another year now. "It's like being in a perfume shop and you're trying on all these different perfumes, and then by the end your nose is on fire and you can't tell the difference between anything so you have to take a step outside and get some fresh air," explains Nai. "If you can still remember the process you shouldn't listen to it, right?" adds Perrin.

For the unenlightened, the album is a hedonistic voyage into blues, samba, colourful funk and washes of percussive soul - with the occasional homage to the video game thrown in. It's as much Dilla as it is Debussy, Dexter Gordon, Donny Hathaway, and Dragon Quest. With such a range of styles, you might imagine something messy, convoluted, even try-hard. But the band's ingenuity stems from an ability to make these ideas flow smoother than a Lexus.

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"We don't wanna make temporary music that's just for a buzz, for fame or whatever. We attempt to create something timeless."

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The foursome's own listening habits are naturally as diverse as the musical styles they embrace in their own productions. "Umm... any music from the Sahara desert?" offers Nai, when asked what her recent vibe is. "I have no idea what they're saying, but it just chills me out, and is really intelligent."

While Bender's into real sound engineering from the '50s and '60s - "when there wasn't such thing as a synthesiser, before they'd compiled all those different components into one thing with a keyboard on it and there was just a big oscillator that was a huge box with one giant knob on it. To make a melody you'd have to record one note at a time on tape and then cut the tape up with scissors and sticky-tape it into some sequence."

"There were people that did some incredible things," he continues. "Now, all music is pretty much electronic now, even a rock band - by the time they've gone through all the modern production. So to hear how cutting edge and forward thinking some of the people were back then, how much more original some of their stuff is back then compared to all the stuff that's out there now... Back then those dudes were well-versed in science and mathematics and twelve-tone classical theory and all that stuff, and creating new machines that hadn't ever existed before..."

Whereas Simon's been down the Aphex rabbit hole lately with 'Syro' - "it feels like he hasn't left his room, he's still recording music, you know, still doing his hermit thing."

Lyrically, Hiatus Kaiyote's songs delve into the strictly personal. 'Molasses' was written in Paris following a breakup, with Nai translating the grieving process into sound. While 'By Fire' was conceived as a burial song for her father; "using fire as a metaphor for its creative and destructive uses - you know, it can give life, it can take life. I don't think death is necessarily a negative thing... it's a transition."

For her, Hiatus Kaiyote is about creating "sonic sanctuaries" for people, whether they've lost their father or not. "Everything's really personal. I feel like we don't wanna make temporary music that's just for a buzz and for fame or whatever. We attempt to create something timeless."

More unusually, the album draws inspiration from the animal kingdom as well as human. Nai is a self-confessed "crazy bird lady" (Kaiyote takes its name from a bird appreciation society) and 'Choose Your Weapon' isn't without its ornithological musings. Her pet parrot Charlie Parker (a nod to the jazz musician, no doubt) chirps and tootles throughout the album. "He's very fun to have a conversation with. He doesn't speak human language, he's very abstract," laughs Bender. "He's a synthesiser - birds are the best synthesisers."

The 16th track on their album, 'Making Friends With Studio Owl', is exactly what the name suggests - Nai found an owl "doing its thing" outside their studio and decided to sing with it. "It's super dorky, no special effects or anything, it's just jamming with a bird!" she laughs.

Her love of the creatures was sparked in her youth as an orphaned child, moving to the country and living with wildlife carers. "When I moved back to the city for music, I found this crow on the side of the road that was a baby, it couldn't feed itself yet, because there's an awkward period where they're too big for the nest. So I took it in and hand fed it and I got woken up with a scratch on my face and when she was all good to look after herself I released her back into the wild and tattooed over the scratch."

"We're all nature babies even though we live in the city." The wildlife that exists in Australia is one source of inspiration, now made permanent by the inky line that runs from her mouth to chin, but her enthusiasm for the natural world extends further. "I'm really into natural medicine and indigenous cultures around the world, researching about different shamanistic practises," she continues.

"It's something i'm really fascinated by. I really like exploring different potent natural rituals that people have been doing for thousands of years to get your soul back, and recharge. My manager just gave me this really amazing book on Nungkaris, which are aboriginal Australian medicine people, and a lot of their wisdom has been forbidden to outsiders, or people who aren't Nungkari, and they've just released a book where they share their knowledge."

"Life?" suggests Bender, on the topic of inspirations, before the band burst out laughing and break out into a rendition of Des'ree's ghost-fearing 'Life'. "Yeah, I spend a lot of time thinking about Des'ree, just lying on my back, imagining her face in my mind, hovering above me... Like a beautiful angel. No, but it's been a really hectic couple of years, so just getting back into hanging out with people - in a pool, drinking beer, and just talking shit. That's inspiring, you know?"

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Words: Felicity Martin

Photo Credit: Katherine Squier

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'Choose Your Weapon' is out now on Flying Buddha / Sony.