Electric Six lead singer Dick Valentine said he has been thinking of making a rock opera or concept album.

"I've been wondering what it could be about," Valentine said during a phone interview from Tuscaloosa, Ala.

"Maybe I'll spend some time at the Mormon Tabernacle and not necessarily write a rock opera about the Mormons but maybe divine some sort of wisdom."

For now, however, the band — Valentine (born Tyler Spencer), bassist Smorgasbord! (Keith Thompson), keyboardist Tait Nucleus (Christopher Tait), drummer Percussion World (Mike Alonso) and guitarists The Colonel (Zach Shipps) and Johnny Nashinal (John Nash) — will settle with the release of its new album, "Kill," the official follow-up to 2008's "Flashy."

As it has in the past, the band relied on inspiration and instinct.

"We have ideas and then we let some of those evolve," Valentine said. "We don't want to be too structured, nor do we want to not have a game plan.

"And we never want to make the same album over and over again." Valentine said there are a number of approaches one can take on a single song.

"On this album, we wanted to make songs that were ordinarily more new wave and make them less new wave by putting a guitar on them.

"But if we made the same record twice, it wouldn't really affect us."

Throughout high school Valentine listened to vintage R.E.M. He discovered the Pixies in college and got into a lot of Talking Heads.

When it came time to form a band, Valentine had a plan — it's all about the greens.

"We are very money motivated," he said. "If we stop at the pace we're doing now, then nobody will care (about us) anymore. We exist in a fear bubble. If we took six months off, no one would care anymore.

"We are cowardly, and we try to hold ourselves to ideas and standards, but if they don't work out, we don't lose any sleep."

Still, there are rewards for playing music live and making CDs. One that sticks out in Valentine's mind is world travel.

"I have never left North America before we got a record deal," he said. "And now I've been to five continents."

Two other benefits of playing in a band is finally becoming self-sufficient and meeting new people.

"It's nice to be able to pay the bills," he said. "And we meet a lot of new people and then later we wished we'd never met them."

If you go ...

What: Electric Six, Gay Blades, Millions of Brazilians

Where: Urban Lounge, 241 S. 500 East

When: Nov. 17, 9 p.m.

How much: $12

Phone: 801-467-8499, 800-888-8499

Web: www.smithstix.com or www.24tix.com

e-mail: scott@desnews.com