With their third album, Yeah Yeah Yeahs have said yes to the guilty pleasures of synth pop, writes Emma Forrest

Yeah Yeah Yeahs like to rehearse in a studio in Silverlake, a part of Los Angeles where you're never too far from a multi-million dollar home-or a US$1.50 taco stand. It's a neighborhood that's gentrified but still salted with soul, much like the band after eight years together.

Soul underpinned Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 2003 debut album Fever to Tell (which sold more than one million copies) and in particular its breakthrough single, the ballad "Maps". singer Karen Orzolek wept real tears in the video. These days, you can play "Maps" on the music video game Rock Band, its pure emotion downloadable in easy, medium, hard or expert. Another sign of changed times - for a band who formed in Manhattan, got their break supporting the Strokes, and whose trashy, new wave sound is intrinsically linked to New York - is that Orzolek  moved to LA four years ago, while guitarist Nick Zinner is hoping soon to be bicoastal.

As for drummer Brian Chase, who still gives drum lessons to children in Brooklyn, does he have plans to head west? "Hell, no."

Zinner has stalagmite hair and bends his arms upwards from the elbow as he talks, like a marionette. Chase, bespectacled, has synaesthesia, a neurological crossing of the senses that means he sees colour when he plays or hears music. Orzolek, although clearly a shy person, is friendly, exuding a fragile, old-fashioned femininity, despite her pink, tiger-stripe trainers, blue paisley shirt buttoned to the neck, drainpipe jeans, and red, heart-shaped brooch made of Lego.

While Yeah Yeah Yeahs were breaking through, Orzolek's stage presence was explosive. She wore spandex, spat beer, and licked the microphone. "The spectacle," she says today, bashfully.

Over dinner at a Silverlake restaurant, Orzolek starts talking about the John Hughes coming-of-age film Pretty In Pink; and the scene "after the prom, when they're running towards each other to that song." Leaving her salad, she sings "If You Leave", the number in question: "I touch you once, I touch you twice, I won't let go at any price." Then she says, "That scene is how I feel about love, even as a 30-year old."

You can detect that in the band's new album, It's Blitz!. On the track "Hysteric", Orzolek sighs: "Fall sweetly, hang heavy, you suddenly complete me." And on "Runaway", her loveliest vocal yet, she evenly offers: "I'd like you to stay, Want to keep you inside." The politeness of the request, when her heartache is all too palpable, makes it a ballad to beat even "Maps".

"Writing is how I process," Orzolek says. "More than ever, I wanted to get to the heart of the matter - in lyrics that were simple but suggestive."

As influences, she cites the stories of Carson McCullers, with their spiritually isolated misfits, and the poetry of Anne Sexton, that modern model of the confessional poet.

Melodically, half the songs on It's Blitz! are a move towards upbeat synth pop, away from the wall-of-guitar sound that made Yeah Yeah Yeahs famous and drove their second album, 2006's Show Your Bones (nominated for a best alternative music Grammy).

Zinner says the change was deliberate. "It just seems like there are too many mopey, whiny indie bands out there now."

In "Heads Will Roll", Orzolek orders: "Ohf with yer head! Dayance dayance till yer dead!" It's the best New Jersey accent in a disco song since "Heart Of Glass", when Debbie Harry's lover turned out to be a pain in the ass.

Orzolek says the poppiness of their new, synth-drenched music will help it reach new audiences, such as "a dorky kid in Jersey."

When a band moves in a synth pop direction - especially a band with a guitarist as admired as Zinner - you might think it's because they have come to hate each other, as it's music you can make without ever being in the same room. Yet even though Show Your Bones was recorded at a time of extreme tension, things are apparently fine between Zinner and Orzolek now.

"There's so much opposite attraction between Nick and I in terms of our musical sensibility," says Orzolek. "A lot of the second record was dealing with the realization of how different we are. But we have a shared purpose that's bigger than us as individuals."

Chase says: "Making a band last is like being in a relationship." When things seem troubled on the surface, he says: "you have to maintain that bond underneath."

They all grew up in the suburbs: Orzolek in New Jersey, Zinner outside Boston and Chase on Long Island. Chase and Orzolek went to Oberlin, an Ohio college famously tolerant of eccentricity. After dropping out and moving to New York, Orzolek worked at Kim's Video store, a Manhattan oasis for weirdos with attitude and a great training ground for anyone wanting to be a rock star - which, after meeting Zinner in a bar and forming an instant bond and band, she was. Overnight. The music press was looking for a new scene and, 20 years after Blondie and Talking Heads, they decided the time was ripe for a New York renaissance.

Orzolek found herself in a curious situation: she had never taken the band seriously, but now everyone else was doing exactly that. "It creates a conflict within you," she says. "It's definitely a loss of innocence."

The band was also unhappy at being lumped in with the Strokes, then seen as saviours, but now silent.

"I always felt," says Zinner, "that we didn't fit in with them, or feel comfortable with any of the New York bands we were mentioned alongside, with the exception of TV On The Radio, who came out a bit later. In that sense, it's a relief the others aren't out there any more."

About LA, Orzolek says that communal experience is her big thing. She explains: "My favourite thing in Los Angles is the outdoor movie screenings of cult movies, lying on rugs, drinking wine and eating snacks."

"It's so LA," says Orzolek, who recently saw Don't Look Now there, "and so amazing that it exists. Being in a cemetery where you enjoy art and film and each other."

Before they leave, Orzolek takes off her Lego heart-shaped brooch to check who made it: Dee and Ricky, twin hip-hop kids working out of New York, it turns out. Her hair would look rubbish on anyone else, the makeup would look clownish, and the outfits unflattering-but I want that brooch. I immediately order one for myself. It seems a very Yeah Yeah Yeahs accessory-a heart that can be taken apart, examined, and then put back together. ~Emma Forrest