The Radio Dept. recording next project, considering Jens Lekman collab

Radio Dept.In a Skype interview early this morning, the Radio Dept. let slip that they’re heading into the studio to start the follow-up to 2010 album of the year Clinging to a Scheme. “We’re recording,” Martin Larsson said. “Next week, we start.”

This time, however, they’re hoping to avoid missing — or setting — release date deadlines.

“We don’t want to promise anything because that’s what happened the last time,” Johan Duncanson said. “We said to our label that we’re going to have an album finished by July or something in 2007, then they posted it on their website and it took another three years. So we’ll see.”

The group also addressed a long-ago rumored collaboration with fellow Swede Jens Lekman, which could still be in the works.

“I got a virus on my computer, I [had] just started working on some stuff that he sent me,” Duncanson said. “That was back in 2005. I lost the songs and then we’ve never had another go at it. But we’ve been talking about it on and off as recent as just a couple of weeks ago. So we’ll see what happens.”

In the meantime, the band has a new EP, a two-disc singles set, a February L.A. date — the band’s first SoCal show ever — and Coachella to look forward to. Look for my full interview with the band in the weeks to come.