"All Is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade", That may sound a little strange, but the title and beating heart of Icelandic indie-folk collective Of Monsters and Men's fourth album hits a lot closer to home than you'd expect.

A tapestry of stories, moments, and conversations, the album explores how love and pain intertwine. Feelings that might seem at odds with each other, but co-exist simultaneously and need one another.

Tales both big and small - from the loneliness and longing of living in a block surrounded by strangers, to missed connections in a grocery store, to the lives and losses of a community of mice in a vacant house during winter.

Co-singers and lyricists Nanna Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar Þórhallsson often found themselves telling stories from two different points of view. The album deals with "the duality of things - where there's love, there's bound to be pain. You really can't have one without the other," explains Nanna. "It's inspired by our lives, our family, our community, and the generations that came before us. Our lives, along with theirs, make up the Mouse Parade."

"In some ways it's an album about growing up, but in other ways it's also about returning home by making peace with the past," Ragnar adds.

In the six years since the band's last LP, Fever Dream, the Icelandic indie sensation has had time to take stock. Touring until the pandemic put things on ice, the quintet released an EP and a documentary before embarking on some solo projects - including having a few kids. It made for a much-needed breather from the treadmill they'd been on since the massive "Little Talks" blew up back in 2011.

"After 10 years of constantly being on the album-and-tour cycle, it was a re-evaluation of things," admits Nanna. "It was about having a moment to step back and go, 'Oh, we're adults now.' We were settling into a life that wasn't just life as a band. It was definitely time for a rethink."

Iceland is famously a small and tight-knit community, so the best friends were never far from one another. When the time came to start making their next record, they decided to shift their surroundings and go without a label for a while to "rediscover the connection we felt when we were starting out." The sound and energy of the record followed suit in a bid to "have a lot of fun and get that core feeling back," explains Ragnar.

"We'd usually meet up in their studio around 10 each morning, brew a bad pot of coffee and have a conversation about everything and nothing before diving into the music."

"It took us, on and off, around two years to record the album," shares Ragnar. "We're usually slow pokes in the studio because we love revisiting songs, making new versions, and adding layers and little moments here and there. It's important to us to really hear the sense of time passing in the music."

Nanna agrees: "We wanted this album to feel like a band coming together to play - to lean into the band's chemistry and embrace the chaos that comes along with that. It felt important for us to be on the floor, playing together."