Local Natives keyboardist and contributing songwriter Kelcey Ayer takes his craft seriously. But don’t think that means he can’t unwind with trashy TV like the rest of us. Over the phone from his family’s abode on the sunny West Coast, Ayer takes a second to adjust to interview mode. “I’ve been watching an Entourage marathon,” he admits sheepishly, shifting the phone from ear to ear. See they are just like us.

Ayer, along with bandmates Taylor Rice, Ryan Hahn and Matt Frazier, deserve this much-needed downtime. Sharing the songwriting duties, the Los Angeles-based foursome has just completed its arresting sophomore effort Hummingbird.

The 11-track song cycle is based on the unusual netherworld between the elated emotional state that accompanies creative and commercial success and the mundane, sometimes-difficult world of everyday life. The resulting album is darker, sharper, ambitious and more emotionally driven than their debut – full of deeply personal, autobiographical lyrics tucked neatly into vocal harmonies and percussive folk-tinged pop songs

“It’s basically about the last couple of years,” Ayer says. “[Hummingbird] was a product of us growing up a bit and having our dreams come true on the first record. All you want to do as a musician is play your music in front of people and we were able to do that and so much more. But, at the same time, life has its way of getting in the way and making itself known, bringing you back down from cloud nine.”

The simultaneous experience of handling the unexpected success of their fun-loving, self-funded and self-produced debut album Gorilla Manor, and the not-so-exciting happenings back home, brought Ayer and company to a more introspective place.

“There were some trying times that we had to go through,” he continues with a serious tone. “We were going through them while making the record and we always take material from our own lives and emote from the music. It helps us process things, and we’re in the lucky place to be songwriters – and that has its own therapeutic nature to it.”

Wary about relinquishing too much creative control, Local Natives were picky about choosing a producer to twist knobs on the effort. After touring with The National, they felt a natural musical kinship with the band’s main songwriter Aaron Dessner, who showed genuine interest in helping them out in the studio.

“We wanted someone to take it on like as a passionate thing and we weren’t really interested in talking about it as a cold structure of a song, rather than what the beating heart of it was,” Ayer says of the experience, which was more collaborative and rewarding than the typical musician-producer relationship, as Dessner served as a mentor, big brother and gracious host when Ayer, Rice, Hahn and Frazier stayed with him and his family during the recording session.

The track list of Hummingbird reads like a macabre short story book, but that doesn’t mean the songs that make up this stellar album are solemn. Instead, each chord, melody, drumbeat and lyric is imbued with profound emotion and yearning, and the sonic growth that accompanies a major life shift.

“We didn’t intend on making a darker album,” Ayer opines, clearly no longer in Entourage mode. “We try to do things as organically as possible, so things rise to the surface – and those are the kinds of things that come out in the songs.”

Like the dichotomous subject matter that inspired the album, Hummingbird also employs a stylistic juxtaposition that fuses light and dark, articulated by evocative lyrics, forlorn guitar strums and swooning melodies that deepen with each listen. In addition, there is a creative continuity rarely found with so many songwriters at the helm.

“It is really difficult,” Ayer admits of the writing process. “But it’s great because, at the end of the day, you have four like-minded people in the group who all want the same thing and that’s to make a song together that we can all can be stoked on and proud of.”

This even involves discarding great songs that don’t have enough of everyone’s musical “fingerprints” on them – something that’s essential for the band. “We all like what we make together and we realize that it’s stronger with the four of us,” Ayer says, “rather than one of us individually.”