[Photos by Sahar Ghahari + Sarah Schmidhoff]

“Dreamy” is one way of describing Dungen’s new disc, 4, which comes out next Tuesday through Kemado Records. That and, well, “jazzy,” as if Gustav Ejstes’ band was performing at a bar rich with the scent of spilled whiskey and stale cigarette smoke. (Sure enough, Dungen performed a lot of new material as a piano and drums-led duo earlier this summer.)

“It’s not easy to make something sound good on the telephone, but [Gustav] played me this one piano melody [during the songwriting process] and it just sounded beautiful,” explains drummer Johan Holmegard, as we ease into an interview with him and Ejstes at Kemado’s Chelsea office. “Since I’m really into jazz, I was glad that a lot of this [new] music had a jazz feel to it.”

As he’s done in the past, Ejstes worked on 4’s skeletal tracks while decamped in the countryside home of his mother, a place with a negligible population and storage for the singer/multi-instrumentalist’s throwback equipment and prized vinyl collection. Writing and recording sessions in Stockholm were sporadic throughout the past year, a time that allowed Ejstes to become a more open-minded band leader.

“I’m a control freak, but I have a lot of confidence in these guys now,” says Ejstes, “Where I can present a song and ask what they would contribute to it. I might still say, ‘You should play a little more like this,’ but I am open [to ideas].”

That much is clear in our conversation, as Ejstes and Holmegard give us a complete breakdown of 4’s back story and an EXCLUSIVE stream of the entire record. Enjoy …