“It’s an album that you can dance to, or cry to, or both,” says Jack Antonoff, reflecting on Strange Desire, the debut release of his new band Bleachers. The record is released today (6 July) here in the UK and he “can’t f**king wait” for fans to hear it.

You’ll know Antonoff, but perhaps not by name. As well his high-profile relationship with GIRLS creator Lena Dunham, he’s been working in the music industry since he was a teen and has enjoyed stints in bands Steel Train and the Grammy award-winning Fun, before starting his new project.

“Every band I’ve ever been in, it’s a totally different space. It’s like a different universe; your body’s doing the same thing, but it’s emotionally entirely different,” the 31-year-old told MTV, backstage at Calling Festival on Saturday.

Antonoff and his Bleachers bandmates have been in the UK for four days at this point without playing a show and, as Jack reveals, they “have a lot of pent up energy to go out there and actually play!”

This energy transformed into a scorching set at Calling Festival, where they played hits including new single ‘I Wanna Get Better’. With impeccable showmanship and immeasurable exuberance, Bleachers brought a little bit of New Jersey to London’s Clapham Common.

One thing that makes Jack such an interesting character is those who work with him and the music they make. With a star-studded collaboration list to rival everyone in the business, we decided to delve into this and ask about perhaps his most famous collaboration, Miss Taylor Swift.

“The process was great because it was so tiny, and it led to something so big,” he begins, on writing music with Swift.

“She would send me the ideas on a voice note on her phone and everything was so tiny. It happened over email, or with just me and her in a tiny room, no big studios, no big entourage.

“It’s amazing to see songs that were dreams of being big songs, become big songs,” he continues. “Because when you record in a huge studio and there’s lots of people around, that feels like you’re in an arena so it’s less cool, but these were made in bed.”

Later this month Bleachers are embarking on a huge US tour with Charli XCX, but how did this pairing come to be?

“She’s great!” says Antonoff. “We went to the studio and recorded some music together, and just became friends over the past couple of months.”

“I would never do a tour if someone told me I should tour with them. It would have to be a friend and so since we actually got along, and knew we wouldn’t tour for three months and want to kill each other, we realised it was a good idea.”

As well as working with Charli XCX, Jack has worked with the likes of Sara Bareilles, Tegan & Sara and, more recently, Grimes. “Claire’s incredible,” he says, Claire Boucher being the synth pop songstress’ real name. “We were in the studio together and we released a song called ‘Entropy’ a couple of months ago. I love working with people that inspire me to work in the first place, because that’s very full circle, and she’s a huge inspiration to me.”

You’re probably wondering who’s next in the pipeline of collaborations. “I would love to work with Robyn,” Jack told us. “There is some artist out there that one day I’ll get to work with, and I’ll fall in love with as an artist, and it’ll be massively important for me to learn from them.”

With Strange Desire out now, you’d think that the band would have no time to work on the next record, but not Bleachers.

“Actually I was working on the next album last night in my hotel. I’ve done a bunch of recording here in the UK for it, those wheels are turning, which means there’ll be a lot of music in the UK soon.”

With this exciting news, there was one last question we just had to ask: what is Sia’s cover of ‘Like A River Runs’ all about?

“I won’t say too much about it, but it’s linked to a project that I’m going to release soon and it will all make sense in the next two weeks.”

It’s a good job we have Strange Desires to keep uscompany until then.

By Megan Downing.