Just before heading to Toronto to record the new SFK album with Stephanie Ashworth (bass) and Clint Hyndman (drums), Dempsey stopped over in Dublin for a month. He had not met his Irish relatives before, and he says, "it was awesome to realise you were part of a group of people that was larger than the four you'd known all your life." The experience pushed some buttons.

Most of the lyrics on the album were written during that stay, and are concerns of learning about one's place in the world. More buttons were pushed when he watched a TV documentary on sharks. They're such a beautifully designed killing machine, yet there's something graceful and ancient about them," he explains. "They tend to keep to themselves. But there's nothing ambiguous about them. You know frrom looking at them if they're going to attack or go the other way. Beautiful Sharks absolutely sums up the music on the record - it's beautiful but at the same time there's an uncomfortable feeling too."

Beautiful Sharks continues SFK's fascination with the tension between science and nature. Dempsey, who formed the band straight out of high school five years ago, wants to go to university one day to do quantum physics and quantum cosmology. "I'd need to do 15 years of mathematics to get active in it. But I want to do it for personal joy. I have no time for conspiracy theories. I'm more interested in the history of science, from the Spanish Inquisition, burning of witches and flat earth societies, to astronomy. Physics reduces everthing to a particle, and that gives you a refreshingly different perspective of life on earth."

Yet Beautiful Sharks has many natural elements, predominantly water. "Easy" came from a dream about computer animation circles floating above water, while the sense of space on cuts like the title track evokes that feel.

Dempsey agrees that on the Latino-beat "Big Screen Television", the groove stops midway, and he introduces a riff that evokes water cascading into a different passage.

SFK arrived in Toronto last October and rehearsed for two weeks, developed a taste for Canadian beer, and went into the studio.

Each brought in items of spiritual totems. Dempster took a wooden crafted giraffe from his large collection ("I'm 6'7". I have an affinity for giraffes"), others brought in pictures of polar bears.

Beautiful Sharks is more accessible than past albums, especially "Whatever You Want" (about remaining sceptical of what you read), the saccharin pop of "Hallway", the Britpop of "Electricity" and the Motown pop of "The Astronaut". Are they just growing up or trying to write hits before their 15 minutes of fame runs out?

"We've never tried to write a hit or cater for an audience," Dempsey says, highly amused. "To us, the joy is that we wrap ourselves up in the music as soon as the three of us click. I bet we could write a hit song if we wanted to, but none of us could live with ourselves. We know how the music biz works, we could easily do a hit by numbers. I doubt anything in the Top 10 was a labour of love. No, I think we've just got better. The sound of our early records was of three people who liked playing together, so they were loud, fast and urgent. On this album we're experimenting to see how we can stretch out."

Beautiful Sharks sees SFK kick out, not only against the restrictions of being a three piece, but also against the restrictions of being a rock band. In the last two years they haven't listened to guitar rock. Rather they've listened to the ambient atmospherics of Radiohead, Tortoise and Massive Attack, and learned how to use their instrument in different ways. Chekc out the different textures on "Big Screen Television" and "Easy, and the ambitions of "Photograph" and "Anchorman".

The first edition of Beautiful Sharks includes an Interactive CD ROM that takes the user through various facets of the SFK experience. Included will be a band history and discography, a feature on the making of the video for "Electricity", tour footage, and studio visuals from the recording of the album.