Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have had an extraordinary beginning to their musical lives. Like a lot of bands, they started life simply, playing shows and having tentative studio explorations. Then all hell broke loose; indie internet site Pitchforkmedia ‘discovered’ the band, gave them a glowing review and a sycophantic interview, and the next thing they knew the band were mailing out in excess of 2000 copies of their independently pressed album per week.

The thing is though, like Arcade Fire, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah broke large not because of a website, but because of their music – their debut album is a ripper, influenced by the likes of Talking Heads, but very much with its own sound. Frontman Alec Ounsworth bristles at the ‘Pitchfork broke this band’ ruse, but is struggling to understand why it’s been such a fuss – “I’ve never really had an opportunity to understand any other kind of response,” he says of the glowing reactions to his music. “It’s the only thing that I know now, and it’s the only experience I’ve been through. But in my mind it’s never absolutely surreal; more people are coming to shows than were before, and that’s all I can consider.”

Alec is currently residing in Philadelphia, his home away from home (that’d be the road). He has always been based there, but made the record in New York. How did that occur? “Oh, I took a train…probably,” he deadpans, aloof and debonair. “We did the bulk of it in Rhode Island, and there was another engineer who was in New York, and I was working down here in Philadelphia at the time, and I went up every so often to work on it.”

Apart from Alec, the rest of the band are based in New York City. Alec works on the songs in the city of brotherly love, then take them to NYC to develop them with the band. That’s what he’s doing currently, plotting away for the second CYSY release. “I’m trying to piece together what in fact should be on the next record,” he explains. “That involves going through older material, and maybe writing some new songs.”

Given the response to the debut, you could expect some aspect of the songwriting process to change, but Alec assures that it’s the same as it ever was. “I’ve been writing songs for about eleven years or so,” he states, “and on the first album there’s a song that’s about eight or nine years old for me, and the rest were written in the last seven years. I understand that I need to restructure certain things for the people that I’m playing with now, and essentially I’ve been going back over material and ideas, and fleshing out and rearranging them and trying to fit them in my head as to how they might be reflected on the second album.”

That involved rethinking them in terms of how we wants them to be now, with a greater understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of his bandmates. It may sounds like there’s a definite plan in place, but that couldn’t be further from the case. There’s a sense of weariness in his voice; since the release of Clay Your Hands Say Yeah’s debut it has been non-stop for the group, a veritable whirlwind of activity. They’ve started work on their planned second album, with initial sessions being very much a tentative step. “That was just kind of feeling things out,” Alec says, “and we have three two week runs in the studio, and that was the first. In my mind, that was pre-production and trying to figure out a certain aspect and a certain mood. Now that I kind of have it, everything else starts to shape up in my head and the second run is very important because I need to make sure that I explicitly know precisely whether or not a glockenspiel needs to be on a song, or what keyboard sound needs to be on a song, etcetera, etcetera.”

It sounds very much like Alec IS Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – he writes it and takes it to the band for them to develop. “Sometimes I start with a basic concept, and that’s how it was when we started off,” he agrees. “I’d start with a guitar or piano which I recorded and I’d bring to them, and we’d work on it and practise it and I’d have certain suggestions. Other times I’d record certain other instruments like bass or use the drum machines and have a more fleshed out idea, and I’d hand it over to certain people because I thought they were the right people to play it. I pick out certain songs that I think I know the strengths and weaknesses of the people I play with and that I need to make sure I play to their strengths, so I pick songs that I think will fit their strengths.”

For their second album, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are taking the production to another level, and employing the services of the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev’s mainstay producer, Dave Fridmann. “I try to balance the ideas I have with any suggestions that he might have,” Alex explains. “Working with someone like that is great, because I feel like I have a good idea as to how he works, and puts his ideas in. I picked to work with Dave for that particular reason.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s self-titled debut album is out now. The band were meant to be here for Splendour in the Grass last week, but sadly cancelled.