It was April 2012 and Taylor Guarisco was feeling frisky. GIVERS had just finished a career-reaffirming set in support of their bouncy, breakout indie-pop debut on their home turf at The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, performing right before Bon Iver. The band invited Justin Vernon to come to their late-night show at One Eyed Jacks, and, despite whatever festival ADD he was facing, the Bon Iver singer showed up with some of his bandmates.

“Justin said, ‘Where are you making the second record, bro?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know, your house?’” Guarisco says with a wry grin while en route to get his wisdom teeth removed. “I was feeling bold, but Justin said, ‘Well, I have this place in Wisconsin…’”

That barroom hang led to a more formal conversation and, less than two years later, Guarisco and the rest of the Lafayette, La.-bred GIVERS found themselves holed up in snowy Eau Claire at Vernon’s April Base Studios, knocking out tracks for their sophomore— and surprisingly hip-hopinspired—record, New Kingdom.

“We had this morning ritual where we’d have breakfast, Justin would come in and nod his head to whatever we were working on, and then he’d go into his part of the studio and we’d go back to work. We’d meet in the living room later, have a beer and rock out to whatever we’d been working on,” Guarisco says. “He was in the final stages of mixing The Staves album, and we were mutual cheerleaders. We brought in the cake for Mardi Gras.”

However, GIVERS’ path from Jazz Fest’s Gentilly Stage to Vernon’s souped-up residential recording space and, finally, to New Kingdom’s November release was decidedly more “nomadic.” The group—Guarisco (guitar, vocals), Tiffany Lamson (percussion, ukulele, vocals), Kirby Campbell (drums, percussion), Josh LeBlanc (bass, guitar, trumpet) and latter addition Nick Stephan (keyboards, saxophone, samples, flutes)—burst out of Louisiana and onto the kaleidoscopic festival scene in 2011 with their bubbly, rhythmic indie-pop introduction, In Light. (Lamson and Guarisco first planted the seeds for what would become GIVERS in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when they were both forced to evacuate the Crescent City.)

“There’s a looseness and freeness to the way we develop songs that can be attributed to the New Orleans approach—the freedoms of improvisation and playing off of each other in any given moment,” Lamson says. “That’s definitely one of our avenues to get to certain places within a song—using the feel of a moment more so than the over-analytical thought of it.”

GIVERS signed to Glassnote during a period when labelmates Mumford & Sons and Phoenix were rising from buzz-band status to cultural icons, and their joyous anthem “Up Up Up,” which married chipper hooks with adventurist Afro-funk grooves and an appreciation for art-rock production, became a crossover hit. The band even scored placement in a Lipton iced tea commercial.

“We toured a year before In Light and for two years after, so we all needed a few months with no shows,” Guarisco confesses of the whirlwind period. “After that downtime, we all got cabin fever.” Instead of booking some studio space and jumping right into recording, Guarisco, Lamson and their pals rented a vacation home in Banner Elk, N.C., and spent time cooking up song ideas. In Light engineer Korey Richey joined the group for the sessions, driving with a U-Haul full of his gear straight from working with Arcade Fire on the Carnaval-inspired Reflektor. They came in with a few sonic blueprints and song sketches, but weren’t afraid to “follow their accidents” as they developed into new ideas. They continued workshopping those ideas in False River, La. and recording commenced in Maurice shortly after.

“The owner of the house would have freaked,” Guarisco says of their time in Banner Elk. “We moved all the furniture out to set up our gear and had cords running through the living room. The songs started taking shape and we took those ideas to Wisconsin.”

After laying down some more tracks at Vernon’s pad, the group finished the record back in New Orleans and Maurice. In total, they found themselves with about 50 song sketches that they eventually whittled down to the baker’s dozen that ended up on New Kingdom. While the album retains In Light’s charm and chorus-like energy, New Kingdom also weaves in some left-field hip-hop and R&B touchstones on songs like “Bermuda,” “Growls” and “Lightning.”

“Everyone in the group loves hip-hop—that production approach,” Guarisco explains, noting their shift away from “happy Afrobeat.”

“There are some songs where Tiff and I write out the lyrics like traditional singer-songwriters. Then, there is a song like ‘Bermuda,’ where we had a cool, funky, programmed beat and we just started freestyling—rapping—over it. It is something we do for fun all the time and that is truly the spirit of this band. We were a different set of people by the time we started making these songs.”

Lamson adds: “‘Lightning’ was born in a similar fashion, with a bit more of an R&B approach. Tracks like ‘Growls’ were chopped and edited to create a world in which experimentation could occur more freely—vocal samples were a big part of the initial foundation of the track, then the beat was programmed out and layered with live/ electronic percussion and instrumentation to create a larger, electro-Bollywood-sounding landscape.”

New Kingdom wasn’t the first time that the members of GIVERS changed course. Before they coalesced as GIVERS, most of the group cut their chops playing in instrumental-oriented jazz and funk projects— Guarisco even toured in a zydeco act. “In middle school and high school, that was my only out,” Guarisco says. “Everything else was white-boy shit I couldn’t get behind. GIVERS was the first time we experimented with lyrics. I had never sang in a band before; Tiff had never sang lead in a band before.”

That adventurous spirit continued to guide GIVERS as they worked on their sophomore record, yet they were careful to also honor their roots. “We’re really excited to go to new places, but I didn’t want to make any music out of rebellion of the self,” Guarisco says, noting that they recently dipped into a studio for a project with Cyril Neville, Johnny Vidacovich and Big Chief Monk Boudreaux. “There’s no separation in the city of New Orleans when you zoom out.”