The Decemberists leap from their comfort zone on new song "Severed"

The Oregon-based group have linked up with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Lana Del Rey) for their latest outing, which sees the folk-rock titans transformed into almost-unreconisable shapes. "Severed", which you can hear below, is the first taste of this new direction.

The album follows 2015's What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World and draws heavily from bands such as New Order and Roxy Music.

"When you’ve been a band for 17 years, inevitably there are habits you fall into," says the group's Colin Meloy. "So our ambition this time was really just to get out of our comfort zone. That’s what prompted working with a different producer and using a different studio. We wanted to free ourselves from old patterns and give ourselves permission to try something different."

"We were talking about music and our references," continues Meloy. "It kept coming back to Roxy Music and early glam, and we dove in with that in mind. The Decemberists are a record-collectors’ band, we’re all fans and scholars of music, so there a lot of touch points that we all get, but they don’t always come through. So we were trying to embrace that Bryan Ferry aspect, that kind of set the tone."

The Decemberists have also announced the return of their two-day festival Traveler's Rest, which takes place 4-5 August in Montana. Find out more.

Tracklist:

1. Once In My Life
2. Cutting Stone
3. Severed
4. Starwatcher
5. Tripping Along
6. Your Ghost
7. Everything Is Awful
8. Sucker’s Prayer
9. We All Die Young
10. Rusalka, Rusalka / The Wild Rushes
11. I’ll Be Your Girl