Yeah Yeah Yeahs Spending Hiatus Working on 'Passion' Projects

While the Yeah Yeah Yeahs take a break after touring for much of the last year in support of their third album 'It's Blitz,' guitarist Nick Zinner likes to keep busy working on other things and with other people. "We like to take time off and work on other projects, kind of just gather passion and take our time in what we do," he tells Spinner, noting that the band has no plans for their fourth album.

Recently, Zinner showed up at 'Saturday Night Live' to perform with Arcade Fire and has been busy this fall with his new art book, 'Please Take Me Off the Guest list,' a collaboration with writer Zachary Lipez and graphic artist Stacy Wakefield. The book is his fourth partnership with his old friends, Lipez and Wakefield, and features Zinner's photography, a hobby he's pursued since he was a teen. A big supporter of good old-fashioned film, the guitarist laments its disappearance from the art world. "It's ridiculous," he says. "They're really destroying a craft in that sense."

Zinner says he likes to extend himself in many areas of the arts, but the best thing about it is working with friends. "It helps friendships stay strong. The friends that create together stay together," he says, laughing. "By anyone else's notions of success, it's not successful," he adds of the books. "But it's successful for us. We do these purely because we enjoy them. We always question if anybody will care or if there will be an audience for what we do. Primarily, these are self-interested endeavors in the sense that we do them because it makes us happy to do them."

That basic tenet extends to making music with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. "Absolutely -- otherwise you're doing things for the wrong reasons," he says. "It's a personal success, which is the best kind of success."