eighth grade, I played the game. I was, like, the class clown for the popular girls. But because I was half-Korean, I always felt set apart.”

Face to face, Karen is far prettier and less androgyne than photo spreads, or seeing her spit beer live, would lead you to believe. At dinner, she’s wearing black suit trousers and an oatmeal cable-knit sweater with fake-fur shoulders, chic and professional, the way an editor for French Vogue might dress for the office. With her wide-set cheekbones, long brunette bangs, comedienne’s nose, and slender build, she brings to mind a foxier Shelley Duvall. When I ask if turning 30 was a big deal, she cocks her head in amazement, incredulous at how dumb guys can be. “Of course it was! I’m 30! I’m ancient! But,” she promises, “I’m gonna be even weirder this year than I ever was before.”

f

OR PROOF OF HER CRI DE COEUR, THERE’S IT’S BLITZ, THE

upcoming Yeah Yeah Yeahs album and their first since 2006’s Show Your Bones. Written and recorded over the course of a year in a series of remote, genteel, off-the-grid locations, the record marks a decidedly drastic shift in musical direction for the trio. Gone, in large measure, is Nick Zinner’s spiky guitar roar, the bedrock of the band’s sound and nearly as crucial to their identity and success as Karen’s supersize, Mick Jagger–meets–Mary Katherine Gallagher live persona.

In place of the guitar are lots and lots of synthesizers (played by Nick, and occasionally Karen), guitars that have been made to sound like synthesizers (Nick), and throbbing, Lexus-sleek dance beats (courtesy Brian). “I remember Karen saying, ‘I think Nick shouldn’t just play guitar on this record,’” says Nick Launay, who shares production credits on It’s Blitz with TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek. “Nick’s reaction was similar to mine, which was, ‘ Wow.’ ”

“Our producer was flabbergasted,” recalls Chase. “He was pleading, ‘Nick, you’re the best guitarist we have in rock’n’roll right now and here you are, playing all these synths!’ ”

For his part, Zinner seems remarkably nonplussed about leaving behind his calling card and learning on the fly an unfamiliar set of instruments, pedals, effects, and techniques. “When Karen orders, ‘No guitar for Nick!’ it makes you approach things in a different way,” he says without rancor, sipping from a mug of taro tea not far from his East Village apartment. “I’m still trying to teach myself how to play keyboards and piano.” He’s just returned from a New Year’s trip to Panama with his girlfriend, photographer Aliya Naumoff, where the adorably petite and pale couple traveled the country, searching out vegan restaurants, befriending cab drivers, and snapping hundreds upon hundreds of photos. (Zinner is an accomplished photographer, as well.) “I always want to do more things,” he says. “More sounds, more instruments, more everything.”

The band all agree that Is Is, their 2007 stopgap EP featuring new recordings of early material, closed the chapter on, in Karen’s words, the “raw, guitar-driven, heavy tom-beat, visceral side of ourselves. I had a craving on this record for a sound that left a little more space to work with.” I ask whom they think their new stuff sounds like. Chase and Launay proffer the pulsating ’70s disco collaborations between Italian producer Giorgio Moroder and R&B orgasmatron Donna Summer. Chase, conservatory trained and a prominent figure in New York’s free-jazz microculture, boasts of a new “coolness” on It’s Blitz, “in terms of temperament, not faddishness.” Karen, when pressed, cites the dance-floor despair of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Some may hear echoes of nouvelle knob-twiddling modernists like MGMT.

Sitek, also a producer on 2003’s Fever to Tell and Show Your Bones (and whose band is a unanimous YYY fave), likens their makeover to those of shape-shifters David Bowie and Radiohead. “I write off any band that makes the same record three times in a row,” he says. “These guys were totally up for challenging themselves.”

Because Karen and Zinner are still interested and adept at writing sticky hooks and melodies, and because Karen has as much Cyndi Lauper in her as, say, PJ Harvey, It’s Blitz shouldn’t get confused with Kid A—lush, kinky new-wave dance tracks like “Zero” (the first single) and “Heads Will Roll” have more chance of catching on than anything they’ve released since their tearjerking breakup ballad “Maps.” “There’s no comparison to the feel-

Christian Joy T-shirt, Silver jeans.

46 MARCH 2009 / BREAKFAST SERVED ALL DAY AT SPIN.COM