TV on the Radio find words do come easier

The main attraction at a sold-out gig, TV on the Radio aren't scheduled to perform until after 10pm.

But at Pappy & Harriet's in Pioneertown, California, a dusty little roadhouse off Route 62 near Joshua Tree National Park, sound check is far from a private affair. So on a recent afternoon, Tunde Adebimpe and Jaleel Bunton find themselves with an audience of grizzled bikers and late-lunching tourists as they test their gear hours before showtime.

"What should we play?" asks Adebimpe, the taller of the band's two bespectacled lead singers. Twisting dials behind a mixing board, the sound guy suggests a song from TV on the Radio's new album, Seeds, released last week. Bunton, on bass, has a different impulse, and soon enough the room is jamming to a breezy rendition of the theme from Ghostbusters.

A surprising bit of repertoire for these brainy critical darlings? Maybe. Really, though, TV on the Radio have been in the business of upending expectations since they emerged from the same early 2000s scene that produced The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Back then, this racially diverse, stylistically adventurous outfit were challenging ideas about what a New York rock band should look and sound like.

Now, three years after the death of bassist Gerard Smith led to a hiatus nobody was certain would end, TV on the Radio have returned with a bold record that shakes up the band's approach even as it emphasises their staying power.

"When I think of TV on the Radio, I think of a band that's part of a lineage that includes my favourite art-rock pioneers: Brian Eno, David Byrne, David Bowie," says Chris Douridas, a DJ at Santa Monica's KCRW-FM. "They're the heirs-apparent to that mantle."