James Murphy wasn’t sure what to expect when the Arcade Fire arrived to record with him at DFA Records’ New York studio in March. “There’s a lot of them, and they’re mostly self-produced – like, they don’t need a producer in a certain way,” Murphy tells Rolling Stone. “So I didn’t know how it would go.”

The Canadian rockers have released few details on the highly anticipated follow-up to their last LP, 2010’s The Suburbs, but the LCD Soundsystem mastermind and DFA co-founder said the quality of the songs he worked on took any pressure off of him as a producer, and allowed him to suggest different approaches or ways of fine-tuning the material.

Arcade Fire Recording at James Murphy’s New York Studio

“It’s always working,” he said. “It’s just that I might have a different way of approaching how to finish, or how to accomplish an end result that really works.”

Arcade Fire have performed a handful of new songs, and hope to have the album ready for release by the end of the year. “I think it’s going to be a really great record, actually,” Murphy says. “I’m eager to see it come out.”

Reporting by Dan Rys