When Franz Ferdinand release their new album next year, some of the songs will be punctuated by a very old, very dry kind of percussion. No, it's not a vintage drum set – it's something a good deal more macabre. The Glaswegians have been playing with human bones.

"I remember we were working on a song called Kiss Me, and we wanted to have a real dry, percussive sound in the chorus," frontman Alex Kapranos ominously recounted to MTV this week. "We had this skeleton in a box that just ended up sitting in the corner of the studio, and we all sort of looked at it, and decided to experiment with it."

Kapranos and guitarist Nick McCarthy had purchased the bones at doctor's estate auction last year, buying the large box of remains as a novelty. They thought they might use them to decorate their studio. But instead of honouring the dead by carefully laying their bones in a place dedicated to life, music and friendship, they instead, er, used them as drumsticks.

"Nick had the hands and was clapping the bones together," Kapranos said. "[Drummer] Paul [Thomson] was working with the pelvis bone and a femur. We put the teeth in a glass jar and rattled that about. We smacked the ribs together and we got this really weird, fucked-up kind of a sound that was wicked." Wicked seems the right word. "I can't think of any records with human bones on it."

We're not honestly all that scandalised by Kapranos's confession – really we find it grotesquely fascinating, weirdly charming. But it certainly casts their forthcoming album in a new light. The record, which may be released as early as January, is tentatively titled Tonight – though maybe they could change it to Tonight of the Living Dead.

"Right from the beginning, we set out to make a record that had joy in it," Kapranos said. "Even if you're singing about the darkest of subjects or tragedy, there has to be joy in the performance. There has to be that energy."

Calling the album Tonight "wasn't a deliberate or a considered decision, but a reflection of where our lives are at and the way we were living, and it came through in the music when we were playing," Kapranos said. "All the songs relate to different night-time vibes and activities." Such as ... using skeletons as musical instruments? Hunting for zombies? Dance parties at Glasgow's necropolis?