I love the self-titled record to death but it was difficult to make. But that point is so over for us. I don't think we've ever really entered this territory of just feeling amazing about everything like it is right now.

Pitchfork: After working in Toronto with producer Dave Newfeld on You Forgot It In People and Broken Social Scene, you decided to go to Chicago with Tortoise's John McEntire for the new album. How did that come about?

KD: It goes back to when [Stars bassist] Evan Cranley was trying to figure out where to record their album In Our Bedroom After the War, and-- knowing that I was a massive fan-- he just casually said to me, "I spoke to your boy John and he seemed like he was into producing the new Stars album, but we're going to Vancouver." I just kind of spit my cigarette out and was like, "What do you mean? You can work with John McEntire?!"

Then, in October 2008, we fooled around and had a session in John's studio. It was so much fun, and that's when the wheels started turning. So we had to start figuring out what we were going to do in terms of Newf, because there were still issues that I hadn't worked out with him. A bunch of us didn't know how we were going to do this record without Newfeld because he played such a massive, massive role in all our success. He was very involved-- I mean, he used to come on the talkback and suggest lyric changes [laughs]. So we were quite scared to take a lot of it on ourselves. I called Newf up and told him what was going on and he gave his blessing, and that actually was a catalyst for him and I getting back on the same page, which I'm really grateful for because he is one of my favorite people in the world.

Then I suddenly I found myself in a whole different world. Johnny is very, very different. Very quiet. He lets you figure it out. Sometimes we would bust into tunes and be like, [takes deep breath] "OK, let's see what he thinks about this one." We didn't really know how he was feeling about everything for a little while. Then one night a couple of us went out for drinks with him and at about the fourth drink in he started opening up and telling us what he thought about the songs. It became a trend. And then it became sort of a joke-- a band member would come up to me and be like, "I'm really tired and I can't go out tonight but would you ask John how he felt about my part in this song?" [laughs] I consider John a good friend now and I'm happy to say he's joining the band. Obviously, he's still got Sea and Cake and Tortoise-- but when he's free, he's going to come out and play with us. I'm just trying to live my teenage dreams over here, and this was definitely one of them.

Pitchfork: Was it tough to get people like Feist, and members of Stars and Metric involved this time around?

KD: Well, there was a point where it looked like it was going to be a core-member record and we weren't going to get those people because they were so busy; Stars were making a record, Metric was on the road. We thought, "It's OK, we can do this without them. We can move on. It's not like that anymore." But when we brought Johnny to Toronto and set up it was immediately like old times. So, right at the end, everybody made it on.