The Black Keys are working on a new album, which is due out in the fall. In the past, the duo of Dan Auerbach (vocals/guitar) and Patrick Carney (drums) has championed a recording approach called "medium fidelity," described in the liner notes to The Big Come-Up as "equal parts broke-ass shit to equal parts hot-ass shit." But as the band has grown more successful, it has tweaked that formula a bit.

"We got better equipment, but we lowered our IQs in the process," said Carney. "We did so many drugs supporting the last album."

Well surely such accomplished bluesmen as the Black Keys would have interesting taste in drugs, no? So which ones do they favor? Sterno? Shoe polish? Something to give them that Tommy Johnson, sold-my-soul-to-the-devil vibe? Or are they more into the Jake Leg?

"Nicotine, caffeine," says a sheepish Auerbach.

"We might dabble with a little bit of shoe polish—only if there's a bit of nylon to strain it through," said Carney.

It's obvious that Carney is joking. Any self-respecting connoisseur knows that the best way to filter shoe polish into an intoxicant is to pour it through a slice of white bread. Drink what's left in the glass and you'll have a helluva time (although you might go blind for a couple of days in the process).

But that speaks to the fact that the Black Keys aren't some jive-ass porkpie hat wearin' honkies pretending to be blues. They have internalized it so that it's (as John Sinclair might say) in the meat. They don't have to sing about sharecropping because they have internalized it and can apply it to their own real lives.

"We don't think about authenticity in any way. We just try to do what comes naturally," Auerbach said. He added that when he was learning how to play guitar, the blues formed "the root of what I know how to do musically."

"We don't actually think about what we're doing," said Carney.

And this talk of low IQ is bullshit anyway. It's not that the Black Keys are stupid. They've just broken the music down to its root element. It's so simple that it seems simple-minded. But really it's smart.

In a way, it's hard to talk to them about it. The whole thing is so unselfconscious that it's hard to formulate questions. Asking the Black Keys "Why do you play the blues so good?" would be like asking a cloud "Why are you fluffy so good?" How the hell is someone supposed to answer that? It's like a Zen koan.

That spontaneous approach extends to the duo's song selection. From original numbers to covers as wide-ranging as The Beatles' "She Said She Said" to Richard Berry's  "Have Love Will Travel" to the Stooges' "No Fun."  Generally, those selections develop organically.

"It's not like we sit down and have a meeting. When we do talk about a song for more than 10 minutes, we usually get frustrated with it and suck the life out of it," said Carney.

Auerbach agreed, noting that "it either works or it doesn’t and we usually know pretty much immediately."

The upcoming record will be the pair's third full-length release, and the second as members of the legendary Fat Possum stable. It's a fitting tribute to the Black Keys' abilities that they're a part of the same label that released such great records by T-Model Ford and Junior Kimbrough. And both the Black Keys and the Fat Possum folks seem to have a distrust of the academic folklorists—those who would turn the blues into a museum piece rather than a living art form.

"The people that I used to look up musically couldn't read or write. What does talent have to do with any of that other shit, other than documenting it?" Auerbach asked.