Our annual Summer Stars series features a variety of groups making the rounds on the festival circuit. Today we feature The Flaming Lips. We’ve also checked in with Allen Stone, Lord Huron, Shovels & Rope, Passion Pit, John Scofield, The Lumineers, Futurebirds, Tea Leaf Green and moe..

The Terror perfect parallel to our career," Flaming Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd says while describing the strange, bleak, exciting sound of the Lips’ first proper album after two years of out of the box recordings. “We had this big freak out and now we’re coming down and thinking, ‘What are we going to do?’”

Drozd started working on The Terror while The Flaming Lips were mixing 2012’s collaborative Heady Fwends at longtime producer David Fridmann’s space. “He’s got another studio set up in case you’ve got some free time,” Drozd says. “I just started recording sounds. I was fucking burnt out. We’d done the 24-hour song, we’d done the six-hour song and we’d been touring like crazy. But I guess there was something there because I kept going back to this one song [which became ‘You Are Alone’].”

Though The Flaming Lips have pushed conventional pop’s boundaries for decades, the resulting album was a departure, even for them. The Terror is filled with dissonant psychedelic sounds, crazy synths and dark, addictive post-apocalyptic beats that are alternately beautiful and, well, terrifying. The hooks that have long served as the Lips’ easiest access point are also noticeably absent.

“When we finished the 24- hour song, I just had no more musical ideas,” Drozd admits. “It was almost like starting from a blank canvas. Wayne [Coyne] jumped in there with me – like we were discovering music together for the first time.”

Drozd admits that The Terror’s bleak outlook stems from personal issues, too. “I was in a little crisis of my own and it says a lot about whatever was going on in Wayne’s life that he reacted very strongly to what I was doing.”

As they gear up for a supporting tour behind The Terror, the Lips are thinking of ways to rework their stage setup without totally abandoning the explosive, celebratory energy of their live set.

" Yoshimi got us to a next level of pop commercial success and At War with the Mystics seemed like the extreme end of pop production and songwriting," Drozd explains. " Embryonic felt like a left turn, fuck you to that – the wild, acid LSD freak-out party that goes through the night. The Terror is the next morning when the sun’s coming up and you’re thinking, ‘Oh, my God. What am I going to do?’" *

Album for a Hot Summer Night: There’s a bunch of them. Led Zeppelin, _Houses of the Holy, Donna Summer’s Greatest Hits – the list can go on and on.

Summer Drink: It used to be beer but I quit drinking – I’m not a total hardcore teetotaler but I lost my taste for beer – now, I just like Arnold Palmers [iced tea and lemonade].

Festival Stops: Brighton Festival, Hulstfred Festival, Northside Festival, Forecastle, more.