It was last spring 2012, and John Gourley—front man of Portugal. The Man—found himself in New York City about to ring the bell at Danger Mouse’s apartment--a long way from his current home in Portland, and farther still from his real home in Alaska. Six fulllength albums in six years, nonstop touring, a stint with The Black Keys and festival stops at Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza— up until this moment, Portugal. The Man embodied all dimensions of DIY rock range.

When it came time to begin work on the seventh album, Gourley thought long and hard about the next move and kept coming back to one concept: The most satisfying work is collaborative work. From building houses with his father in Alaska to building a devoted fan base, he had sought partnerships. So he took a bold step — bold for a proven band, bolder still for its uncertainty of sound — a step up to the apartment of a possible collaborator, Danger Mouse. “I walked into his place,” Gourley remembers now. “And it wasn’t going to happen. He was like, ‘Hey, man, just so you know, I don’t really want to record a rock band.’ And I was a little relieved. We’d done this by ourselves before, and we knew we could do it by ourselves again.”

But then they got to listening, and to talking about how much Danger Mouse had loved In the Mountain in the Cloud — the 2011 follow-up to Portugal. The Man’s break out record The Satanic Satanist. “From that very first meeting,” says Danger Mouse, “we were very ambitious about what we could do…otherwise there was no point. So we decided: Let’s try and make something really special.”