With a New Album of Outrageous Dance-Pop, Confidence Man Is Here for a Good Time—And a Long Time

Still, it’s that tight-knit spirit that led to the creation of many of the album’s tracks: the 3 a.m. of the title refers to the moment during their all-night recording sessions when they’d tend to get the best stuff. (After that, the creative vibes decline: “It’s fun after 4 a.m., but it’s not very productive,” Planet admits.) “I guess we would always, over the years, drunkenly sit around a kitchen table at night and get out a laptop and a shitty mic and just make some silly songs about whatever,” says Bones, but this time around, they realized that the products of these late-night jam sessions were actually, well, pretty good. Recreating the same environment at their tiny studio in east London, they aimed to capture that febrile atmosphere, and encourage a sense of spontaneity. “It actually stops you from getting so caught up in overthinking and wondering if it’s good,” says Planet. “If you’re just drunk and everyone’s having fun and no one’s taking it seriously, the best ideas come out.” Adds Bones, “So if you’re reading this, kids, just go out there and get drunk, and you’ll have a great record too.”

While Confidence Man has always delivered club-ready hits—just take the Basement Jaxx-esque funk of the band’s 2016 breakout hit “Boyfriend (Repeat),” or the breezy Balearic groove of “Luvin U Is Easy” from their sophomore album, 2022’s Tilt—this time around, the group decided to go directly for the dance floor, taking cues from techno, trance, breakbeat, and other genres. This sound was partly crystallized after the success of “Holiday,” Tilt’s fantastic lead single (the video for which saw them fly across the desert in a hot air balloon—airborne modes of transport are a recurring theme, clearly), and the realization that they could lean into more challenging forms of dance music without giving up their signature catchy toplines. “We thought it was something that was missing, really,” says Planet, “that crossover between ’90s rave music and pop hooks.”