Front page photo by Kathryn Yu; photo on this page by Drew Kaiser

The rumors are true. And then some. Bon Iver mastermind Justin Vernon laid vocals down on "at least 10 songs" during three separate week-long trips to record with Kanye West in Hawaii earlier this year. While it's unclear how many of those tunes will actually make Kanye's forthcoming record-- due November 16-- at least one, "Lost in the World", seems to be a lock. In fact, the track-- which features newly recorded vocals by Vernon as well as a prominent sample of his Auto-Tuned song "Woods"-- could very well be the as-yet-untitled album's next single, according to a Kanye Ustream broadcast that aired last week.

All this news comes courtesy of Vernon himself, who excitedly chatted with us about the collaboration yesterday. Talking about "Lost in the World", Vernon said, "We were just eating breakfast and listening to it and Kanye's like, 'Fuck, this is going to be the festival closer.' I was like, 'Yeah, cool.' It kind of freaked me out." Along with West, Vernon met and worked with Nicki Minaj, John Legend, and Rick Ross while in Hawaii. He said, "I was literally in the back room rolling a spliff with Rick Ross talking about what to do on the next part of a song. It was astonishing."

Please allow the amazingness of that last quote to settle in. OK, let's move on.

Vernon's work with Kanye may be the most sensational thing he's been up to, but it's not the only thing. He's currently toiling in his own April Base studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, trying to complete the next Bon Iver album, which he says won't be out until next year. And he's gearing up to head out on tour with his soft-rocking side project Gayngs in September. And because that's not enough news for one story, he's starting an intriguing new imprint with his label, Jagjaguwar.

We talked to him about all the above-- especially the Kanye stuff-- so please click on to read the full Q&A:

Pitchfork: Walk me through this Kanye West collaboration. How did it come about?

Justin Vernon: I was in New York in January and I got a call from my manager and he said Kanye West wanted to maybe use "Woods" as a sample." I was like, "Yes." A week later there were more murmurings and eventually I just got on the phone with Kanye. We ended up talking for a half hour about music and how we were fans of each other and Avatar. It was a really pleasant, easy-going conversation between two people that are pretty psyched about music.

He was like, "I like how you sing so fearlessly. You don't care how your voice sounds. It'd be awesome if you could come out to Hawaii and hear the track, and there's some other shit I think we could throw down on." I was just like, "Yeah, cool man!" I surprised myself by not being nervous or apprehensive. I said, "When should I come out?' And he was like, "How about tomorrow?"

So I head out there and he plays me the track and it sounds exactly like how you want it to sound: forward moving, interesting, light-hearted, heavy-hearted, fucking incredible sounding jam. It was kind of bare so I added some choir-sounding stuff and then thicked out the samples with my voice. That whole first week I was there we worked on the "Woods" song, which is called "Lost in the World". We were just eating breakfast and listening to the song on the speakers and he's like, "Fuck, this is going to be the festival closer." I was like, "Yeah, cool." It kind of freaked me out.