Affirmative action from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

If you make a lot of music you have to make more, says Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner.

Down the line from New York, Nick Zinner sounds fragile and teary. "I've been better," says the Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist. "I've just had a pet die," he croaks.

TimeOut offers its commiserations and asks if it was a cat. "It was my turtle," is his sad reply.

Sorry about that ... but, well, we're happy to hear the band are playing a show in Auckland early next month. "We're all excited to be coming down there, but you probably can't hear it in my voice right now," he says, with a hint of sarcasm.

There's a loud muffled noise from his end. It's hard to tell if it's a laugh or a cough. But out of respect, you just have to presume he's not pulling your leg with the old dead turtle trick.

"It's really strange, I got two turtles six months ago and the other one died about a week and a half ago and I guess the other one couldn't survive without it."

If any of the members of the New York trio was going to have a pet turtle called Danger then it's a safe bet it would be Zinner. He's the weedy Nick Cave lookalike, and the one most likely to lock himself in a studio writing songs.

Then there's Polish-Korean singer and siren Karen O (short for Orzolek), with her trademark bright-red lipstick, black helmet hair, and outfits that could be anything from frilly knickers and mini-skirts to a prom dress. Finally is no-nonsense drummer Brian Chase.

Zinner and O formed the band in 2000. Before that they wrote acoustic folk songs until deciding to play rock'n'roll and recruiting O's old college friend Chase on drums.

"Not to sound like a cliche or anything," says Zinner, "but life does have a funny way of bringing people together at the right time. And if I was in any kind of social or musical situation with Karen and Brian 10 years ago, I can't imagine getting along with them. In retrospect, I can see that everything came together to produce this thing."

The band released their debut EP in 2001 and the success of fellow New Yorkers the Strokes helped the Yeah Yeah Yeahs get noticed.

They played support for them, and the White Stripes, around this time, too. But really, the only thing they have in common with the Strokes is New York and being one of the city's hottest acts.

It was their 2003 debut album, Fever To Tell, with tracks like Rich, Pin and Date With the Night, that turned people on to their arty-garage rock.

With O's sexy and staunch on-stage charisma, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were refreshing, shocking, and at times an abrasive slap round the face. And when the beautiful ballad Maps was released in 2004 it opened the band to an even wider audience.

In comparison to their debut, this year's Show Your Bones is a more digestible album, with songs like Phenomena (a lurching catwalk anthem) and Cheated Hearts (a break-up ballad) the highlights.

The two albums were made very differently, with O and Chase more involved in the songwriting this time around, and none of the songs was played live before recording.

"On the one hand, they are radically different records, but I feel like on the other hand it was a natural progression," says Zinner.

"But there's so many factors involved that it's hard to get it down to one thing. Fever To Tell was basically like a live record, and they were all songs that we were playing live and, basically, it sounds like a cross between an assault and a ... oh, I don't know," he laughs.

"Whereas Show Your Bones was all written in a studio over a long period of time - methodically, democratically, and we didn't have a chance at all to play those songs live."

Zinner also admits recording took longer because they felt the pressure of following up a well-received debut.

"We just did our best not to worry about what would happen when people heard it and we did that by totally isolating ourselves. Our manager didn't even hear any tracks until we were well into recording."

The refinement of Show Your Bones is a long way from their first shabby and raw EP, and things have changed since the group started out too. Twenty-eight-year-old O has become somewhat of a fashion icon and even dated director Spike Jonze for a time.

Zinner says with O's natural magnetism and her onstage antics - including spitting beer and grapes at the crowd - she was always going to be the one to get the most attention.

"In any band the singer is the singer for a reason. I don't have that natural ease of command and I don't even think Karen knew she had it until she first got up on stage."

He jokes about how he has changed: "I'm more paranoid. But I play a lot more aggressively now, and each show I try harder to lose myself in it, and make things better, and just try to top the night before."

He pauses, and laughs: "It's kind of like - and this is a really cliched band thing - but if you do a lot of hard drugs you always have to do more. And it's like that with music too."

LOWDOWN

Who: Yeah Yeah Yeahs

What: Arty-garage rock

Line-up: Karen O (singer), Nick Zinner (guitar) and Brian Chase (drums)

Playing: July 12, St James, Auckland

New album: Show Your Bones, out now

Also: Fever To Tell (2003)