The Black Keys joined host Nicole Alvarez live from the Helpful Honda Sound Space at KROQ in Los Angeles for a special interview and performance, talking about their brand new album, Ohio Players, and giving a taste of what's to come on their International Players Tour kicking off in September.

The Black Keys just dropped their 12th studio album, Ohio Players -- featuring the previously revealed single "Beautiful People (Stay High)" and more -- on April 5 via Nonesuch Records. Just before the release, Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach gave some lucky fans at KROQ an exclusive preview of the record and spoke candidly about their early days together, making the new album with a who's-who list of collaborators, and more.

Since Dan and Patrick have known each other for most of their lives, Nicole started off the conversation by showing off a few photos of the duo when they were younger. “The first time I met Dan, it was like, right when I moved to the neighborhood,” Patrick remembers. “It was dusk and all the kids were riding bikes. I had grown up in a neighborhood where it was just like, really old people who just yell at us all the time. So, it felt like I had moved into the Goonies’ neighborhood. They kind of had all the characters; I'm not sure which one I was, but there's definitely a Chunk and all that.”

“I mostly remember his older brother Will, because he was a train enthusiast,” says Dan about his first impressions of Pat. “He was the local eccentric kid,” Patrick says of his brother. “You would focus on Will,” Dan adds. “You wouldn't see Pat or his brother, Michael.”

Diving into their new album, Ohio Players, which features collaborations with Beck, Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, Juicy J from Three-Six Mafia, and more, “on the last album we started to dip our toes into collaborating with people, which we really hadn't done much of… like when we worked with Danger Mouse on a record, it was just him and the two of us. So, it was only in the last couple of years that we actually felt comfortable, I guess being in the studio with other people creating stuff from scratch. Once we broke through that barrier, and we needed to start this new record, we thought we’d dig into the Rolodex a little deeper.”

“The first person we thought of was Beck because he was someone who helped us out very early on, took us on tour very early,” he continues. “He always talked about making some music with us and it, we'd never gotten around to doing it. So we reached out to him and that kind of got the ball rolling -- and it was that spirit of collaboration that we carried on making the record.”

“I think the only thing that you need to know is that we've been doing this for a long time,” Patrick says, “and I think we just really figured out how to really enjoy it seriously. This is a product of us working harder than we ever have, but having more fun than we ever have.”

“We got to this collection of songs, they all work together and it is different than anything we've made," he explains, "and it was really hard to pick the first couple of songs that got shared. So, I feel like people really don't have a concept of what the album sounds like yet. ‘Beautiful People’ is, by far, the most kind of ‘mainstream’ thing on the album… I'm excited for people to hear the whole thing.”

Tickets for The Black Keys' International Players Tour are on sale now. 

Don't miss The Black Keys' full interview and performance above -- and stay tuned for even more action from the Helpful Honda Sound Space at KROQ right here on Audacy.

Words by Joe Cingrana Interview by Nicole Alvarez