Connan Mockasin and Ariel Pink have worked with MGMT on their new album

Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser have revealed that alongside Patrick Wimberly (Chairlift) and Dave Fridmann on production duties, there are contributions from Connan Mockasin and Ariel Pink. Pink actually helped pen some lyrics for latest song "When You Die".

"In about four minutes," VanWyngarden says, "Ariel had this piece of paper incorporating things we'd just been saying in the hallway. When I sang them, it was like, 'Yeah, why not? Why can't this be the lyrics?' For me it was really liberating, rather than sitting there like a poet, scratching out lines for days, trying to find this deep, multiple-meaning thing."

The psych-pop twosome also reveal that an accidentally intense acid trip inspired a track titled "James" - VanWyngarden says that during the process he “spent hours screaming at the top of [his] lungs about Pakistan,” and this helped him sing notes lower than his usual range (because his throat was so worn out).

“When we were doing the last album, we kept talking about wanting to make pop songs, but it just wasn’t happening, like we had to get this other stuff out,” the band reveal when discussing Little Dark Age as a whole. “Maybe doing it allowed us to get where we got to with the new one, which is more relaxed. We’re both really happy that that’s what came out this time.”