Boys Like Girls Declare Death To 'Disco' On Crazy World

In early 2011, Boys Like Girls decided it was time to take a break. Of course, that decision had less to do with a lack of inspiration — they'd just finished writing the follow-up to 2009's Love Drunk album — as it did sheer frustration. The way they saw it, there was no longer a place for the kind of music they wanted to make, so rather than play along (and ditch the guitars), they just called it a day.

"I think we took a break because the music industry had sort of moved on to dance, and it was scary for a rock band. At the tail end of our last record cycle, our last single, radio stations were like, 'We love it, we just want a mix without guitars,' " frontman Martin Johnson explained. "And you can't change the way music is going, so how do we make this work? How do we put out a record that stays relevant for our fans and stays relevant for us? It was tough. We wrote a record and it didn't feel true to the band, so we threw it out. And so we took a little minute."

That little minute would last until the end of the year, when BLG reconvened and once again began work on a new album. Recharged by the time away — not to mention determined to do things their way — they found the sessions to be more inspiring than ever. The end result is Crazy World, an album that splits the difference between rock and dance (not to mention pop and a little hip-hop) but is most certainly, dare we say, defiantly not ready for the club.

"I started writing some songs — we all kind of did our own thing for a while. I went to Nashville and ended up writing the record that ended up being Crazy World," Johnson said. "We're really excited about it. We really feel like we kind of found a way to make the identity work and still be able to play our instruments and not become a disco band."

Fans can get a taste of Crazy World on a teaser EP (due July 17) that features a trio of songs from the full-length, which will be in stores this fall. The EP includes first single "Be Your Everything," a prime example of past pop explorations and a preview of where they're headed in 2012. But no matter how you choose to describe the song, BLG aren't ready to call it a comeback ... at least not yet.

"We played the record for a bunch of people when we were done, and it was a song people really reacted to, because it felt more familiar to the old sound of Boys Like Girls, and a really cool transition into other things we're doing deeper on the record," Johnson explained. "I don't know if you'd call it our comeback single, but I hope [it is]!

It's not a comeback until it's a comeback. We were gone for two and a half years, [and] we're not that old, but it's cool to be back and playing shows. It's going to be exciting."