For musicians who make such massive anthems, Chvrches are incredibly unassuming. The week before they’re set to announce their third album, the Scottish trio of Lauren Mayberry, Martin Doherty, and Iain Cook shuffle into a Brooklyn coffee shop, shake off a little rain, and quietly say hello. Keep in mind, the album they are here to discuss is called, quite dramatically, Love Is Dead.

“In our minds, there’s a question mark or an ellipses at the end of the title,” Mayberry says. “The whole record isn’t completely depressing—it’s more about sitting with certain kinds of melancholy and wondering what you do about that. It’s about frustration, but figuring out a way to be able to feel like that and move on.”

Love Is Dead expands on the immaculate, synth-driven pop of their previous albums, and finds Mayberry singing her lyrics more directly than ever before. Speaking out about sexism has never been an arena where Mayberry has been shy, though the reception to callouts of crossed boundaries has changed in recent times. We discussed this, working out the insanities of the world in songs, and getting through nightmare sessions with a particularly famous producer who shall remain nameless.

Pitchfork: The album strikes me as your most accessible, but also most politically outspoken. How intentional was that?

Lauren Mayberry: I was conscious of wanting to be more honest in the way that I was writing. Not that the other records weren’t personal, but there was a lot more stuff that was buried in metaphor. At the end of the day I thought, “Why are we doing what we’re doing?” When I’m writing, it’s because I’m trying to figure something out for myself. If I don’t believe in what I’ve written, then how can I expect anyone else to believe in that either?

Iain Cook: In this time, people need to be saying what’s on their minds directly without any abstraction.

LM: We’re living in a really weird, conflicted time. I think it will feel jarring and strange if we look back at this era and see that some people were just making vacuous records to feed a two-year album release cycle. Not that we necessarily made an overtly political record, but I think it’s honest. A lot of it’s about grappling with what’s going on in the world, but also what happens in your lives simultaneously.

Lauren, you’ve been outspoken against misogyny and harassment long before the #MeToo movement. Have you noticed any differences in the last few months in how women in the music industry are treated or discussed?

LM: It’s great that people are speaking up, but I want to see what happens in the next couple of years–if people actually put their money where their mouth is. So many people are being fully genuine about it, but there are some people who are definitely using it as a way of finding some kind of branding niche and that’s kind of fucked up.

Ultimately, that will bring the message toward a more mainstream audience and that will change the way that people think in the future. We have to hope that symbolic gestures like wearing white roses on red carpets will translate into actual action. Will the Grammys actually look around the room, at the people and companies they represent and how they treat people? I don’t know. It has to be more than lip service. Otherwise, we’re just going to end up in the same situation.

Maybe it will make my job easier. There’s definitely a lot of praise being given out for behavior that five years ago was getting me called a horrendous cunt. Maybe you won’t get called a horrendous bitch anymore for speaking out. I do think that’s progress.