Difficult as it might be for King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s growing legion of disciples to believe, Stu Mackenzie has done something this year other than bounce between the recording studio and the tour van.

“I’ve actually had some good time off,” the frontman says, reached on his cellphone in Los Angeles. Jet-lagged but affable and chatty, Mackenzie is fittingly heading to a practice space in a van that contains his small army of bandmates: guitarists Cook Craig and Joey Walker, drummers Eric Moore and Michael Cavanagh, bassist Lucas Skinner, and harmonica player–singer Ambrose Kenny Smith.

“We finished our last tour in Europe, so I hung around Italy and Spain with Ambrose and our girlfriends,” Mackenzie continues. “We just cruised around, stayed in Airbnbs, and winged it real hard, just sort of following the nice weather because it’s winter in Australia at the moment. I didn’t want to go home and be in the cold, miserable, and grey winter. So we just chilled out, and the other guys in the band went home and chilled out, while Eric stayed in L.A. and did his thing. We’re back together now, and it’s weird, but it’s good.”

One might rightly wonder how the members of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard managed to carve out some downtime. Some artists—hello, Dr. Dre—go over a decade between releases. But the Melbourne-based septet has been nothing if not busy since surfacing in 2011 with a pair of rough and ragged, straight-from-the-garage EPs, Anglesea and Willoughby’s Beach. After evidently slacking off in 2012, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has cranked out two full-lengths per year since 2013.

That streak remains intact in 2015 thanks to this spring’s proggy Quarters and the due-this-fall Paper Mâché Dream Balloon.

To date, much of the considerable interest in the band has sprung from records that have been heavy on reverb-bathed garage pop, dating right back to 2013 debut full-length 12 Bar Bruise. Paper Mâché Dream Balloon finds King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard turning down the amps, however, and recording on acoustic instruments in a farmhouse owned by Mackenzie’s parents.

The trippiness starts with the pantie-removing MOR jazz of “Sense”, after which the flute becomes King Gizzard’s main musical weapon on the pastoral “Bone” and the easy-listening “Dirt”. Field-holler blues gets a Morrison Hotel makeover on the snaky “The Bitter Boogie”, while “Cold Cadaver” is solid-gold Americana as reimagined by Sid and Marty Krofft.

“It’s been funny, because we were working on a lot of really heavy stuff,” Mackenzie relates. “Like, the heaviest stuff that we’ve ever done—heavy and dark, and the polar opposite to Paper Mâché. I dunno—it was almost like I started to feel bummed out by the heavy songs and that I needed a break. We’re still going to work on those songs, but I felt like I needed to get some things out of my system to properly work on the darker stuff in the future. Paper Mâché is sort of an in-between thing.”

The cover art gives you a good idea of what you’re in for, with the members of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard rendered as tiny Plasticine figures lounging in a pastoral landscape, complete with a water tower.

“Jason Galea, who does our art, got really obsessed with model trains, and I think that was the inspiration,” Mackenzie relates. “If you’ve noticed, there are tiny little trees and all sorts of other tiny little figurines. He’s a funny guy—he tours with us and does all of our projection stuff.”

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard started out as a psychedelic-tinted side project between Mackenzie and various friends, all of whom were playing in bands around Australia. As evidenced by the amount of material it’s produced over the past couple of years, it quickly became something more.

“This started as a very nonserious thing, more just like a jam band,” Mackenzie says. “Then we decided to do some recording, and I think that’s where it changed a little bit. Some radio stations started playing us, and that’s where we really started to wonder ‘What the hell is going on? Why would anyone play this band?’ It really didn’t make any sense. I guess that was just having a bit of initial luck. Since then we’ve all realized this is a really fun band to be part of. I’m cruising around the world with a bunch of really great friends.”

The singer and his bandmates have committed to being more than hometown heroes Down Under. Capitalizing on gushing reviews, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has toured relentlessly, this leading to invitations to top-tier festivals like Glastonbury and cool-kid events such as Austin Psych Fest. (On the day Mackenzie speaks with the Straight, he and his bandmates are rehearsing for an appearance at the massive Kanye West–headlined FYF Fest in Los Angeles.)

All the interest might have something to do with the belief that Australia is currently home to the biggest psychedelic groundswell since the hippies invaded Haight-Ashbury in ’67. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard is often lumped in with a movement that’s given the world psych titans Tame Impala and a laundry list of up-and-comers that includes Scott & Charlene’s Wedding, the John Steel Singers, and Blank Realm.

“The whole community is still really tight-knit and small,” says Mackenzie, who was an accomplished Australian-rules football player before an injury got him focused on learning guitar. “I think the whole music scene in general has that vibe—everyone is sort of buddies with everyone else.”

That vibe is what makes the endless hours in the studio and the tour van all worth it, despite the fact that no one in the seven-piece is cashing Kanye West–size royalty cheques. Well, that, and the rare downtime sojourns in Italy and Spain.

“We’re definitely all not making a living,” Mackenzie admits, “but we are all able to cruise around the world and have heaps of fun with this. At this point, that’s super cool. I never thought I’d be able to do this, so it’s all been a real joy. We’re just going to keep on doing what we’re doing, and if it turns into something more, great. If it doesn’t, well, we’ll have had some fun. And we’ll probably keep on doing it anyway.”

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard plays the Biltmore Cabaret on Tuesday (September 1).