David Byrne can pretty much do whatever he wants. And, he does. To that end, Byrne has teamed up with Dave Longstreth of Brooklyn's Dirty Projectors for the upcoming 'Red Hot' compilation, which benefits AIDS research. Longstreth began writing for the album, which will be released in 2009, as soon as he heard of the plan.

"I wrote the melody in the back of this venue we were playing in Vienna, about ten minutes after I heard we were going to do this," Longstreth tells Spinner. He then sent the Vienna melody to Byrne who added words. "The way he got the feeling of the music into words is very cool," Longstreth says.

On another song, Byrne sent words he wrote in 1976 to Longstreth, who then put them to music. On the recordings, Longstreth plays most of the guitars with Byrne taking a "sweet solo" on one track. They share singing duties, along with supporting vocals from fellow Projectors Angel Deradoorian and Amber Coffman.

Meanwhile, while they wait for the compilation to be released, the Dirty Projectors are working on a new album and fans can catch the band gigging about this summer at various musical festivals.