When the time came to record the follow-up to their debut album The Dust of Retreat at the end of 2007, the eight members of Indianapolis’ art-pop collective Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s traveled to Chicago to camp out in the studio of their new producer Brian Deck. There, during one of the coldest winters the Windy City had experienced in decades, the group worked in shifts, with band members recording their parts in shifts around the clock. This went on for three straight months.

“People didn’t really leave the studio,” recalls Margot’s frontman and songwriter Richard Edwards. “It was freezing.” “But we had little mats on the floor, so you could sleep anywhere,” guitarist Andy Fry adds brightly. “If you got drunk enough, eventually you’d pass out somewhere.”

For the band, the result of their labors is Animal! — a genre-defying blend of lilting melodies, grinding guitars, sweeping strings, and frenetic percussive elements, topped off by Edwards’ expressive, yet often apprehensive croon. The songs, initially written by Edwards, swell into noisy mini pop-operas once filtered through Margot’s collectively skewed sensibility. “With eight people, there’s a lot of possibility for noise-making,” Fry observes.