The thing about CHVRCHES, right, is that they don't always immediately come to mind when someone asks you who makes the best pop music, but realistically they've got to be within at least the first twenty rows on the spreadsheet. Surely.
Their really-quite-CHVRCHES-sounding new single premiered as Annie Mac's Hottest Record last night (if you're keeping track of who's winning the ongoing First Play Wars, Zane Lowe's World Record was the new Pale Waves one), and 'the caller on line one' was Lauren 'Lozza' Mayberry.
She said some things about the forthcoming CHVRCHES album and about how after spending six months writing it they decided to work on the majority of the record with Greg Kurstin, "who you guys maybe know from the Foo Fighters or Adele". (We guys also know Greg from Lily Allen, Kylie, Sia, DAME KELLY CLARKSON, Marina & The Diamonds, Tegan & Sara, Ellie Goulding and Halsey, but yes, it's Adele and """The Foos""" if that makes people feel better.)
"It was good to be pushed and to take risks," Lauren told Annie, adding that the band found themselves "plugging into his Jedi puppetmaster mind".
There is, Lauren went on to note, a sense of directness and honesty about how the songs sound. "If it's going to be more pop," she said, and this really is a very good quote, "it should be aggressively pop. There's no point in us doing things in half measures."
She also said something about "live drums and more live instruments" but let's gloss over that.
Welcome back CHVRCHES, pop has been bearable but very wrong without you.