Gang Gang Dance's third studio album, Saint Dymphna, starts out sounding like a deliriously ethereal glitch-techno night in Istanbul. Ten songs later, the disc closes with five disorienting minutes of jungle-fever percussion, beyond-the-grave vocal washes, and fried-circuit synth buzzes. As challenging as "Bebey" and "Dust" might be, the New York City quartet isn't entirely on a mission to separate sonic adventurists from those who simply want something they can dance to. If you want art-pop at its most outrageously booty-shaking, look no further than the bass-powered, Track 2 confection that is "First Communion". Reached on her cellphone in Ohio, singer Lizzie Bougatsos admits the song didn't end up on the record by accident.

"I think we were looking to make this album more accessible—not necessarily consciously, but just to have a more pleasing sound that was easier on the listener's ears," says the Long Island-raised singer. "That's what ”˜First Communion' was meant to do—get stuck in people's heads. But I also wrote it as kind of a political song about religion and how it [religion] doesn't really unify people."

With no prompting, Bougatsos dives into a detailed breakdown of how "First Communion"—which sounds like a tribal version of Justice jamming with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah practice space—came to be. Major inspirations for the song include her days as a Sunday-school teacher in the Greek Orthodox Church; eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus Christ; the teachings of infamous Pope-picture-shredder Sinéad O'Connor; and culturally enriching Gang Gang Dance residencies in Copenhagen and Istanbul.

Shining through her freeform monologue is Bougatsos's passion for the process of making art. What has her excited these days is she firmly believes America is having a great run of producing acts in the vein of Gang Gang Dance, which counts the likes of New York's TV on the Radio and Animal Collective as friends and contemporaries.

"The only good thing about when the right reigns in our country is that really great music comes out of it, and also really great art," Bougatsos says. "It's like when the right wing takes over, then the left will definitely rise. That's when music that's unique really starts to come out."

Unique is as good a term as any for Saint Dymphna, which finds Gang Gang Dance taking a lush-sounding departure from 2005's murkier God's Money. Whether the band is dragging hip-hop into deep space on "Princes" or giving Björk a run for her kronur in the pop-art-lunatic department on "Afoot", the result is one of the strangest, challenging, and ultimately rewarding albums of the year. That Saint Dymphna turned out to be so fantastically original at least made the hell of creating the album somehow worth the struggle.

"The process can be quite painstaking at times," Bougatsos admits. "Sometimes, when you are trying to achieve the unobtainable, it can be like a stroll through the grave. But I think that mentality sort of feeds our fire. You've got to aspire to the unknown."

Gang Gang Dance plays the Biltmore Cabaret on Tuesday (November 11)