The XX appeared on radio station Beats 1 this week with Zane Lowe, where they took listeners through their new album 'I See You' track by track. They spoke about their new writing methods and how they came to name the album among other things.

The xxThe xx unveil their new album 'I See You' today

Third album 'I See You' is now available on Apple Music and follows their latest single 'Say Something Loving'. The band; who are Jamie Smith (aka Jamie xx), Romy Madley-Croft and Oliver Sim; have got a number of live shows lined up from February, including a series of sold out gigs at the O2 Academy in Brixton and Manchester's O2 Apollo, and appearances at the likes of Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Primavera Sound and Shaky Knees Festival.

On the album's second single 'Say Something Loving', they admitted that they had a slight change in direction when it came to songwriting. 'This was a new way of working for us', said frontman Jamie xx. 'On this album, me and Romy have been really collaborative when it comes to songwriting. One of the rules we had in the past was what I sang I'd wrote, what Romy sang she wrote, and we tried to let go of that and we'd just sit in a room together, we'd discuss, catch-up, and that suddenly starts turning into songwriting.'

Though they admit that there was something 'vulnerable' about trying to compose a song without having any words to do it with. 'On this song we tried to put melody first as opposed to words', he continued. 'It's a really embarrassing thing to do. It's like scatting, basically, singing jibberish.'

More: The xx perform 'On Hold' on SNL

The album, which was produced by their long-time collaborator Rodaidh McDonald, also features the song 'On Hold' which reached number three in the UK Indie chart. 'I See You' was being recorded while Jamie was releasing his debut solo album 'In Colour' and reflects a very different sound from their previous release 'Coexist'.

It's a collection of not just romantic songs, but odes to the trio's friendship as well. 'We couldn't pin point exactly at the time when we were trying to name the album, when we were trying to wrap it up, what the overriding theme was, but I just thought about our friendship and our relationship', says Romy. 'In the place where we named the album and we came up with the visual theme for it, Jamie had rented a car, it was a summer in London, we were driving around listening to Frank Ocean's album sitting there and saying, shall we do it, shall we just call it 'I See You', yeah cool let's just do it.'

The xx's new album 'I See You' was released today (January 13th 2017) via Young Turks.