Vampire Weekend have finished work on their “decidely from-the-gut” third album and have announced the upcoming LP’s release date: May 7, courtesy XL Recordings. The New York-based foursome revealed the news on their website, but didn’t share any other specifics on the follow-up to 2010’s Contra.

But we actually know a bit more about this one — one of our 50 Most Anticipated Albums of 2013 — because the band recently chatted with SPIN editor David Bevan about its creative process this time around. “On this album, there’s a lot of organic sounds and a lot of performance,” Rostam Batmanglij told us. “You want the personality of each performer — whether it’s singing or bass or drums or piano — to be intact. In some ways it’s much more challenging to preserve that and to also make music that sounds modern. The way this album sounds is the product of thinking forward and being fearless in terms of mixing and production, going for something that hasn’t been done before but using elements and techniques that have existed for years and years, pushing them as far as they can go.”

The SPIN cover stars’ homepage also features several letters in the lower left-hand corner — they look like “MVOTC” to us, but your guess is as good as ours (we have been on point lately, though). For a fuller look at Vampire Weekend’s third full-length, read our recent feature with the band. Scroll down to watch Vampire Weekend play a new track called “Unbelievers” on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Kyle McGovern

• @ktmcgovern