Kings of Convenience‘s Peace or Love, their first album in 12 years, is out today, and it features two songs with Feist, who also sang on 2004’s Riot on an Empty Street. Both songs, “Catholic Country” and “Love is A Lonely Thing,” got their start at the 2018 PEOPLE festival in Berlin, where unique collaborations were part of the appeal. In our interview with Erlend Øye, he told us about how “Love is a Lonely Thing” was created.

“The original plan was to sing it in unison, that all the three vocalists are singing the same melody throughout the whole song,” Erlend said. “We did that for a while. We did that at the PEOPLE’s Festival. And then we were here in Sicily, in the summer of 2019, and we started to record it. It was okay, but not great. And then we were in Berlin in September 2019, and we tried again and someone had the idea, ‘why don’t we try having you sing the first, you sing the second and you sing the third?’ So we went to the recording room and did that. And that’s what you hear, on the record. So it’s the first time we’re singing our parts, by ourselves. But the genius thing was, we had already learned how to play the song, but this was the first time that we could really hear ourselves singing. And therefore, have a chance to sing the words and the melody with our own emotion, and our own expression. You always want to record the first take of the song. But you also have to learn the song. So usually what happens is that you’re trying to learn the song, and then you’re losing your first take energy, because you’ve sung it too many times. So we kind of tricked ourselves into giving ourselves a first take, even though we were at the point where we actually really knew it quite well. So for me, that’s the recording that I’m the most happy with. That one, because it is really just the three of us going in there, and really just playing music without too much thinking.”

Kings of Convenience have released a video for “Love is a Lonely Thing,” and like the song, it features Erlend, Feist and Eirik Glambek Bøe each singing their parts, alone, all filmed in very picturesque seaside settings, before coming together (through some editing) for the unison ending. You can watch that, footage of KoC & Feist’s PEOPLE fest rehearsal, and listen to the album, below.

Read our interview with Erlend Øye here, and read our review of Peace or Love here.