EVERYTHING comes in threes for Dry The River, the alternative rock band from the Stratford district of North London.

They will be playing three Yorkshire shows over the next ten days in York, Hull and Leeds, and they have recorded their latest album, Alarms In The Heart, with not one, not two, but three producers: Charlie Hugall, Paul Savage and Peter Miles.

Guitarist Matt Taylor explains the reasoning: "The album took a lot longer for us to finish than we initially thought, and certainly longer than one producer could handle. We recorded the majority of it in Iceland with Charlie Hugall, which was an incredible experience, and I think we drove him completely insane. We thought we had taken enough songs out to Iceland with us to make the full album, but once we returned we realised that wasn't the case.

"It took another year's work with Paul Savage and Peter Miles to realise what we wanted to achieve, and to get to a place where we felt that we were accurately representing where the band was at, in terms of sounds and in terms of ambition. We stress out a lot, basically."

What did they each bring to Dry The River's sound, Matt?

"Charlie was incredible; he totally immersed himself in the record. He was with us when we were writing and putting the songs together, so he was investing just as much in those songs as we were. We all lost our minds a little bit in Iceland, Charlie included," he says.

"Paul was a calming and reassuring influence; we just mixed a couple of tracks with him, and worked on the song Hope Diamond, which is I think my favourite track.

"And we are so comfortable with Pete Miles, him being an old friend, that it means we can work very quickly and productively with him. We recorded three songs and mixed half of the album in a week at his studio. So they all had different influences on the process , all of which were needed at the different times."

Matt reckons that Dry The River have drawn from a broader palette of sounds for the new album, by comparison with their 2012 debut, Shallow Bed.

"The first album was rooted in folk instrumentation to an extent," he says. "Texturally, it was perhaps slightly one-dimensional, whereas we played more with modulated keyboard sounds this time, as well as playing a little more in a production sense, with delays and stranger sounds.

"We also took a different approach with the strings and orchestration on the new record, working with an outside composer. That put a new angle on some of the songs."

Ah yes, in addition to three producers, another significant participant in the album was Sigur Ros and Bjork cohort Valgeir Sigurosson, who provided arrangements and strings.

"We actually share a manager with Valgeir," says Matt.

"We had seen him on his Whale Watching tour with Nico Muhly and Ben Frost and his music was amazing. We felt it was time to change the way we used strings and orchestration in our songs and it made sense to ask Valgeir to score some of the songs.

"It was great watching him work. He's an amazing talent, and his scores did exactly what we wanted in terms of adding a dimension to the songs, but surprised us at the same time. Hearing music you could never create yourself slot perfectly into something you have made is a strange and brilliant thing."

The album title, should you be wondering, is taken from John Irving's 1978 novel The World According To Garp (as well as providing the title of the opening track).

"There's a part in the book that talks about how a late-night phone call can sometimes give you a jolt or a pang of anxiety, and throw things into a brutal perspective," says Matt.

"There were a few moments in Iceland like that for us all. Where you suddenly find yourself way outside of your comfort zone and you appreciate the fragility of yourself, and in fact everything. So the line 'Alarms in the Heart' hit home to us, and it worked with the themes in the songs we had written too."

Now comes the task of transferring the songs to the concert platform, a transformation that will have an increased visual dimension, reveals Matt.

"That part of the show is definitely important. We have put extra effort into dressing the stage, and dressing ourselves, this time round!" he says. "We want people to step into our shamanic boudoir and surrender themselves to the incalculable spirit of the night! Or something...! Come and sing with us!"

Dry The River play Fibbers, York, on Sunday; Welly Club, Hull, Tuesday; The Cockpit, Leeds, October 15. Tickets: £12.50 on musicglue.com/drytheriver