After a year spent locked away at their hometown studio in Vancouver, Hot Hot Heat are finally gearing up to release a new album, likely due this summer. According to vocalist/keyboardist Steve Bays, making the as-yet-untitled album, was all about taking things into uncharted territory.

"Our goal for this album was just to make a crazy album that just sounded like it was from the future and it wasn't anything that we had done before," Bays tells Spinner. "We had 'Music from the Future' written on the wall."

After touring 2007's 'Happiness Ltd.' for more than a year, the band returned home where Bays and his writing partner, HHH drummer Paul Hawley, decided to take things -- originally -- in a different direction.

"We wanted to reinvigorate our approach to music," he says. "By the end of our last album, Paul and I, we had just brainstormed cool, weird ideas and we called [them] 'The Constitution.' It was just his and my way to kind of rejoin as partners. We all kind of separated for a little while."

Bays said there were no plans to split up the band, but as the two men began writing what they thought would be a side project, the ship sailed back into familiar territory.

"It ended up becoming a Hot Hot Heat record because we were like, 'Oh man, this feels like the Hot Hot Heat record that should have been," Bays says. "So then we called [guitarist] Luke [Pacquin] down after a while and we started writing with him, too. It's just a really crazy, spazzy party album."