Kurt Vile has been hard at work on the follow-up to 2013’s stoner-dad casual epic Wakin On A Pretty Daze, and he offered Spin an update. Among the revelations: Vile and bandmate Rob Laakso are co-producing without help from John Agnello, who helmed Wakin and 2011’s Smoke Ring For My Halo, but they’ll be “getting some outside help soon.” Vile’s new songs have “sort of dark,” “late-night” qualities. In addition to his usual full-band and solo guitar tracks, the new project will include songs written on piano and banjo. He’s logged recording sessions in Brooklyn, Athens, and Los Angeles as well as the Joshua Tree home studio Rancho De La Luna, creative hub for the likes of Queens Of The Stone Age and Arctic Monkeys. The Joshua Tree experience led to Vile’s favorite recording of his career:

At first there were definitely challenges because you want to play live but there’s only this one backroom and everything bleeds into everything else, so essentially I was just playing in this little closet room, but I recorded one of my favorite songs ever. Everybody went to bed and I couldn’t sleep. I kept listening and then the sun came up and all of a sudden I just looked around me and I could see everything for miles and I was like, “Man, I just recorded my best song ever and I’m here in the middle of nowhere in the most beautiful, mystical, magical desert.”

He also elaborated on the album’s versatility:

It’s all over the place. Everything you can imagine I’ve done… That’s where I’m at now, that I can sort of tap into every world and make it cohesive.

Sounds rad! No word yet on what it’s called or when it’s coming out, but it sure seems likely he’ll release the album before the end of the year.

[Photo by Fiona Goodall/Getty Images.]