I called Lust For Youth at their hotel in Los Angeles, where they'd just wrapped up a festival centered on bands from Copenhagen, the city they come from. They sounded easygoing, finishing each other's sentences, cracking wry jokes and giggling. You can sense Lust For Youth's mental state in their latest album, International, which has all the melody and bubbly innocence of an early '80s synth pop record. It's a dramatic shift from their previous albums, which were grimy crawls through isolation and despair, expressed through a sound palette somewhere between coldwave and post-punk. International is something else entirely. It keeps the post-punk allegiances but also builds a whole new world of pop within that sound. Lyrics, melodies, sound quality—there's hardly an area where International isn't a massive improvement on an already promising project.

International reflects how Hannes Norrvide's musical outlook has changed since he started Lust For Youth in 2010. The Swede had broken up with the girl for whom he'd moved to Copenhagen, and who helped him in live performances. He needed to replace her onstage, so he turned to Danish artist Loke Rahbek, a member of Vår and some other local bands. They forged an important new friendship. During the sessions for what would become Lust For Youth's fourth album, a third member, versatile local Malthe Fischer, joined them. Together, they made this unassuming but irresistibly catch synth pop record.

Lust For Youth was started in solitude in the dark winter of Gothenburg. But when Norrvide moved to Copenhagen, he became part of a growing DIY scene centered on Posh Isolation, a shop and label of sorts that acts as a meeting place for artists of all stripes. (It's also the outfit behind the Los Angeles festival of the same name.) With countless projects and bands with revolving door lineups, Posh Isolation is a healthy and supportive community that offers its participants an outlet for almost any style they'd want to explore. Iceage, the increasingly famous punk band, is its most visible member, but there's a whole range of other acts involved, too. Lust For Youth occupies an electronic corner of this Copenhagen underground, and Norrvide's early releases like Growing Seeds and Perfect View fit well with the scene's fuck-you attitude. With little in the way of vocals and a washed-out aesthetic not too far removed from early '80s goth, these records were marked by repetitive synth riffs and distantly chanted phrases.

International is Lust For Youth's first record as a band, and it also sees them make the jump into full-on songwriting. Gone are the dirgey vibes of Norrvide's older work; in come vintage keyboards, full-bodied guitars and vocals that sit high in the mix. Inspired by Norrvide's experiences on the road and the personal turmoil all three band members suffered while recording, International is stuffed with wry turns of phrase that can feel heartbreaking or uplifting in equal measure. They're helped by Norrvide's earnest delivery, and while Lust For Youth remains his baby, the new album couldn't have been what it is without his partners.

Rahbek was an important part of Norrvide's support network in his new home. The two met at a metal concert in Berlin, and later became friends on one of Norrvide's early trips to Copenhagen. "I thought Loke would be a good addition. He liked the project and none of my other friends did," Norrvide says.

"It was kind of a coincidence," says Fischer of his entry into the band. "I went to Loke's store in Copenhagen to buy a Vår record, and then asked them if they wanted to record one song in my studio. It just evolved from that."

With Lust For Youth's transformation into a band, Norrvide has put away his synthesizers to become a pure frontman—the group's hopeful, distinctly-accented voice. Rahbek handles the keyboards and other electronics, while Fischer plays guitar and other odds and ends. "He's the only one who knows how to play an instrument," Norrvide says with a laugh.

"And how to record an instrument," Rahbek interjects. "I don't think any of us, neither me or Hannes, had ever before tried to work in a studio, a real studio. It's a very different process."

Like many artists in the Copenhagen scene, Norrvide recorded his past records in bedrooms and rehearsal spaces, lending them a dingy hue that complemented their loneliness. International, on the other hand, was recorded in a real studio, and it shows.

"I think the band always wanted to be somewhat pop," says Rahbek. "This is the first time Lust For Youth really gets to do what it was supposed to do from the beginning. It's like a new language. Even if we call it dark, I think there's a lot of hope and beauty in most of the bands coming out of our community. This is definitely poppier, but that's also an experiment in itself.

Hollywood

"Initially me and Hannes talked about recording just two tracks and seeing what happens. And the day that we decided, Malthe randomly showed up at my store. I think we recorded one song that day, and then we recorded another one. The whole idea was to make it Lust For Youth from the beginning. I suppose it could have been another project but I also think there's a lot of Lust For Youth in the project still. It went from being a kid to being a teenager, and all that different stuff that comes from being a teenager. But it still has the same colour of eyes, ultimately, the same DNA."

"I have the same vibe with the project that I did before," confirms Fischer. "It's just clearer now."

"We were also drinking gin and tonics the entire time we were making the record," Rahbek adds. "That may be it. It's a very different process when you're making music with people."

The new configuration also meant the group had a collaborative songwriting process or, rather, lack thereof, which let the songs build naturally. "Someone would start to play something," explains Norrvide, "and we thought, 'OK, that's good, let's get this song going.' We were just trying stuff out and eventually they turned into songs. Everything was pretty fast."

"I think it took a while before it was even clear that it was going to be a record," says Fischer, "there was no grand plan. It's a record about learning how to work in this new form."

"We just drank more gin and tonics," Rahbek chimes in.

At ten songs and 35 minutes, International is lean and well sequenced, its anything-goes recording also making it feel vibrant and diverse. The band's army of friends and colleagues are all over the record, including Iceage frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, who played guitar on opener "Epoetin Alfa," and Lower's Adrian Toubro, who offered backup vocals. "The studio became this place you could go and we would sit there and drink our gin and tonics and if people had nothing else to do they could go there," says Rahbek. "We've always worked collectively with this group of people in Copenhagen. If someone is around and they want to lay down a guitar part why not just let them do it?"

One of International's most alluring tracks, "Lungomare," features one of these transient figures. Four minutes of pillowy ambient frame a rambling spoken word performance from an Italian woman. It feels cosmopolitan and oddly mysterious, turning hypnotic as the track glows and morphs behind it. "This girl, Daniella, has a clothing store right next to Posh Isolation," Fischer says. "They were this group of Italian girls that we started hanging out with, and we thought she fit the record. Me, Kristian Emdal from Lower and Loke wrote down the lyrics as folding joint—like where one draws the head and then you fold it down and the other draws the body—and we had Daniella translate it and record it."

The album's centerpiece, "Armida," has the album's best hook and another powerful guest performance from a friend of the band, Soho. "It was the first song we recorded," Fischer says. "Me and Hannes tried to do it over and over, and none of it made any sense. Sometimes the right thing to do in that situation is ask someone for advice, and she drunkenly recorded a vocal track, just improvised. It was just what we needed. So we did it again properly. And then other people came in and made the gin and tonics while we were doing it."

All in all the album took six months of recording, which seems monumental when you consider the rushed, bedroom-fidelity sound of Lust For Youth's past records. But more than just slapping on a coat of polish, International also expands the band's emotional range. Where before the group was mostly limited to half-intelligible mumbling and glibly shouted phrases like "I found love," International takes heartache and weaves it into something complex and wistful, sad but still hopeful.

It wasn't only Norrvide who broke up with his longtern partner—all three members had their relationships dissolve in the lead-up to International. "It was just nice to have this thing you could take care of together when we couldn't take care of anything else," Norrvide says.

Many of International's peppier tracks have this dark undertone to them, like "New Boys." With its chorus of "Feel's like you're falling / But it passes in time / Into a better day," it sounds almost desperate to be hopeful, set against a bittersweet guitar riff that could've been lifted from The Cure's Kiss Kiss Kiss. "We needed a lot more sunshine," says Norrvide.

The influence of bands like The Cure, Depeche Mode and especially New Order is clear on International. "I think it would be a stupid idea to sound like another band," Rahbek refutes. "It's definitely never the intention. It was a getting-to-know record, us getting to know each other, and playing around. Coming up with stuff at random and seeing what would work out. It was very late in the process before there was any grand plan. But it did feel obvious what this was about—that it was an escapist record."

Did the process improve their lives at all? "No," says Norrvide flatly. "It was nice when it was done, but after that it was back to square one. But in general, I am really happy in Copenhagen. I can't see myself in any other city. It's also really close to my parents, because they live on the border with Denmark. Felt like I've always been living here, somehow."

"It's the best music scene in the entire world," he adds, eliciting laughs from the group.

International is a strong advertisement for the Copenhagen scene, but right now the band is far away from home. And with an album tour on the horizon, it looks like this will be a regular thing for them.

"The Posh Isolation festival in LA was a great event," Rahbek says. "Growing from 30 people in Copenhagen to presenting 14 concerts in Los Angeles, which are all of extraordinary standards—that makes you feel proud. I think everyone had a good time. I think we're still having a good time."