LONDON Grammar will open their autumn tour at the Leeds O2 Academy on October 18 after a summer of British and European festival engagements that begins with BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend in Hull on May 27.

From a standing start while studying at Nottingham University, singer Hannah Reid, guitarist Dan Rothman and drummer/electronics wiz Dot Major sold more than two million copies of their 2013 debut album, If You Wait, and in the process they collected an Ivor Novello and two AIM awards, a BRIT nomination and the iTunes Album Of The Year honour.

In a gap in touring, the trio had a studio session that would provide a cornerstone for their second album, Truth Is A Beautiful Thing. More importantly, in London in January 2015, Reid played the boys a song she had written “in the shower, basically completely a cappella". "It started on tour, then I finished it at home,” she recalls.

The sparse Rooting For You was almost a done deal from the off, later emerging in January this year as the first single. “The demo we did was super basic,” says Rothman. “And then the recording was simple too," adds Major. “It didn’t need much done to it.”

The album will arrive on June 9, with the title track as another of the stand-outs. “Truth Is A Beautiful Thing is really similar to If You Wait; it just came out in half an hour,” says Reid of her piano ballad. “I didn’t necessarily know what it was about, it was just pure self-expression. Maybe [it’s about] everything we’ve been though as a band. We share the same experience, more than we realised. Other personal stuff is in there too. And, like a couple of the other songs, it’s about perspective: you lose all perspective if you’re isolated, in whatever experience, not just touring.”

Tickets for the Leeds gig go on sale at 10am tomorrow at londongrammar.com