Stephin Merritt has been the chief songwriter for plenty of bands over the years—the 6ths, Future Bible Heroes, the Gothic Archies—but he’s done his most enduring work, and earned his reputation as a modern-day Cole Porter, with the Magnetic Fields. The band has existed for more than two decades, and on the new Love at the Bottom of the Sea (Merge), Merritt returns to its electronic foundations—a shift away from the more conventional instrumentation on the band’s three previous albums (all for Nonesuch), though the songs do include elaborate acoustic overdubs. He was interviewed by knockout singer and Chicago favorite Kelly Hogan, who’s worked of late with Neko Case and Mavis Staples. In June she’ll drop I Like to Keep Myself in Pain (Anti-), her first new full-length in 11 years; she covers a tune that Merritt wrote more than two decades ago, when the Magnetic Fields were still called Buffalo Rome. The Magnetic Fields perform at the Vic on Mon 3/26 and Tue 3/27, and Hogan opens the Tuesday show. She headlines at SPACE on Fri 6/8 and at FitzGerald’s on Sat 6/9. —Peter Margasak

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I love how your songs are short on the new record. Like, the song template in my DNA is probably “Sugar, Sugar,” by the Archies. So that’s what I like—when songs get in, get out. Yeah, otherwise it’s not really pop. What defines pop if not that it’s concise?

Even a tour bus? Are you going to have a tour bus? No, we did that once. Everyone got sick. It was ridiculous. I refuse to be on it, and I don’t think anyone wants to get sick.

I can imagine. I try to remove my embarrassing medicine from the cabinet. I leave my cuckoo pills out—I don’t care. Keeps me from killing someone with a spear gun. Anyway. Love at the Bottom of the Sea, I like that title too, because—I mean, I figure nowadays there’s a chat room and a niche for everybody. I just saw people in shark cages trying to get it on. But it doesn’t have anything to do with the record, right? No, nothing. And the cover [a photo of a stuffed owl] doesn’t have anything to do with the record or the title.

White Castle? White Castle—apparently this fast-food chain has things that are not actually hamburgers, but are small and involve some sort of animal product that isn’t particularly ground beef, so they’re not called hamburgers, they’re called sliders. And there are different kinds of sliders, but they are essentially poisonous.

Really? On this tour? Oh, interesting. But the record is the synthesizer action. Right.

And then Claudia [Gonson]’s playing piano, because I think we’re going to be borrowing your piano for our set. And Claudia’s got a baby now. Is the baby coming on tour? Yeah—you can’t borrow that, though. The baby’s coming on little bits of the tour.