“It’s nerve wracking and it’s exciting,” Miike Snow’s frontman says on the phone from New York just before their first show. They played Jimmy Kimmel the night before but this is the first time they’re performing a full live show with songs from their third album iii. The record is the first in four years for Pontus, Christian and Wyatt, having spent the past few years working separately.

They have rehearsed, wired-up the gear and now it’s a case of stepping on stage and hoping nothing goes wrong. While it may seem like a regular beginning to any album cycle for a band, iii is the album that almost didn’t happen for the band.

“We don’t need to do Miike Snow,” Wyatt says.

For most bands that have achieved the same success as Miike Snow, from playing major festival to nabbing radio hits, this statement would seem impossible to believe but in the case of this band it’s not. Karlsson has spent the past few years rising up the ranks of the EDM world with Galantis, Winnberg started Swedish band Amason and Wyatt has released solo material plus written songs with Charli XCX, Flume and Mark Ronson. On top of that, all three of them have produced for other people. Miike Snow is purely a passion project that also happens to be adored worldwide.

“The period between the last record and this one we went through a phase where we thought there won’t be another record,” Wyatt remembers.

After living in a tour bus together for two years, the trio went their separate ways with no concrete plans to come together and tour again. For them to start recording again, it had to “feel fun and interesting and imaginative,” and they also had to put behind their personal and creative differences that had emerged during the process of making and touring Happy To You.

“Anytime you keep a relationship going, whether it’s a friendship or a marriage or a band or a company, you have certain conflicts and tension,” he says.

“In order for there to be something more powerful than that you  have to be able to see past the ego conflicts and get to something a little bit deeper.”

The third album, iii (pronounced The Third Eye), got its name because of that very reason. It’s about getting past their egos and seeing “what the real value of what we were doing was”.

A lot of the problems the band had, stemmed from the notoriously difficult second album. Their self-titled debut was simply made for fun but after its huge success, spawning hits like Animal and Black & Blue, things changed. People wanted a second album from them and suddenly they had management teams, publicists and a crew around them. Suddenly, Miike Snow was not only about them but it was about everybody else too.

“This machine that’s built around you continues to roll,” Wyatt says.

“You don’t want to be a dick and just kill the whole thing, so you do a second record kind of whether you want to or not.”

Happy To You was a moderate success. It charted all around the world and sent them on another world tour with crowds bigger than the first time around. The issue was it wasn’t brimming with the same energy that the debut was. Their debut was essentially an unconvoluted pop record and their second effort felt far more aware of itself. Speaking about Miike Snow’s place in the pop world, Wyatt says they felt pressure to sound more alternative on Happy To You, “which is why it wasn’t as well received.”

That turned out to be a blessing in disguise. With the second failing to muster the hype that their debut did, the band were suddenly free to do whatever they liked, whether that meant recording a third album or not.

“The second record not doing as well as the first, is kind of liberating, you can then choose if you wanna make a third record, particularly if you’ve got other things that are going successfully,” Wyatt says, continuing that they regained the “fun” of making the debut.

The result is a revived-sounding Miike Snow. From the infectious pop hooks of Genghis Khan to the intricate, delectable electronica of the Charli XCX-featuring For U, this is a record by three guys who have been influenced by the current state of music but also retained their flair for innovation.

“Your music is having a conversation with the world so you don’t just want to be insular,” Wyatt says reflecting on whether or not he listens to pop music.

Interestingly, in the seven years since their debut, the pop climate has shifted significantly. In 2009, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Jason Mraz were topping the charts with songs that followed a tried and proven formula but failed to bring anything innovative to the table. In 2016, all those artists, bar the latter, are challenging what pop music is. It’s become weirder, brighter and more political. Wyatt laments that without changing anything Miike Snow has become mainstream because pop has shifted further towards the alternative and vice versa.

“The first record was, whether we knew it or not, kind of ahead of the curve. The way we were assimilating different genres and combining it in a very concise way, I think a lot of people have done that over the past few years,” he says.

One of the pioneers of making pop weird is Charli XCX, who appears as the only feature on the record. Wyatt wrote and sang on Sucker highlight Need Your Love and so she returned the favour here on a sugar-laiden chorus. “Your fame is outshining me,” Wyatt says, emulating a phone conversation between him and Charli and putting on a voice that sounds like James Dean became a used car salesman. He returns to his normal voice and says, “I let her outshine me. I don’t care.” He knew she’d sing that chorus better than he could.

Today iii is out in the world but for Wyatt the real challenge starts now. Live is where the songs come to life and the band get to see if they connect with anyone. They have refined the process of touring, deciding not to go out for as many consecutive weeks plus this time around they “know the rules of the game”. This is where they get to see what songs really stand above the rest.

“Lyrically and melodically, if your song translates into something that can take people on a bit of a narrative journey it will hold itself in a live setting and if it doesn’t then you’re really just dealing with lots of bells and whistles,” he says.

While they’re set to play Coachella and traverse across America, there are no Australian dates planned as of yet. “I love Australia as a country and I love our fans in Australia,” Wyatt says though with the hope that they’ll be here soon. He also has special ties to this country. He appeared on Flume’s 2015 track Some Minds and also performed special shows with Mark Ronson last year including a magical, rain-soaked set at Splendour In The Grass.

As we hang up the phone, Miike Snow are drawing closer to walking on stage in New York for the first show of their tour. Things are different this time around. For round three Miike Snow’s collective heart is full once more.

Miike Snow's iii is out today and you can locate it where all great records are streamed and sold.

- Words by the interns' Sam Murphy for Cool Accidents