If you’ve heard basically any AJR song, you know the Met brothers aren’t big on hiding their feelings. If it’s possible, the trio plans to get even “more personal” on the next AJR album.

“People already say we’re very personal,” Jack Met tells ABC Audio. “But we’re even going deeper into very much us, and our weird fears and insecurities.”

We got a preview of said fears and insecurities with the new single “The DJ Is Crying for Help,” which dropped in November.

“[The song is about] wondering if you’ve hit your peak, and if your party self was kind of your whole identity, and wondering, ‘Ah, what comes after that?'” Ryan Met explains. “So we thought that was kind of an interesting image, to show that.”

“We’ve been in that mode of, like, ‘We have plans for life, and we know it’s gonna work out,'” Jack adds. “But then you hit that wall where it’s, like, ‘Wow, this is not at all what I planned, and now I’m scrambling and need to find something else.'”

In addition to working on new tunes, AJR will be celebrating the first night of Hanukkah this weekend.

“We light the candles and we do the prayer, every single year,” Jack says, adding that the holiday isn’t really so much about gifts for the group.

“[Growing up] we got one small gift for the whole eight nights,” he laughs. “That’s what we did. So, yep, that’s what we’ll keep doing.”

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