Alphabeat are a band whose sound is in a state of flux. “We wanted to try something new and very different from the first record,” lead man Anders SG confesses. “We didn’t just want to make a “This Is Alphabeat 2.0”.

But, from a recording company’s perspective, that must be exactly what the band wants to do. Alphabeat’s first record, “This Is Alphabeat”, released back in 2008, helped catapult the Danish pop sensations onto the UK scene, giving birth to three top-twenty hits (including Cindies staple, “Fascination”) and launching a furious bidding war when the band left EMI last in January last year. Now signed to Polydor, Alphabeat are preparing to release their second album, “The Beat Is...”, in March this year.

“It’s very influenced by a lot of the dance music from the early 90s” says Anders. “We just really fell in love with that genre. We were very open-minded. We put down references of what we wanted to try and do. And that just became a big blueprint sound for the album.”

Unlike the band’s debut, “The Beat Is...” is very much a dance-pop record. Whilst retaining their characteristic upbeat melodies, Alphabeat have traded in the 80s, B52s-inspired sound of their first release for a record meant for the dance floor. “I need something I can dance to,” Anders himself declares on the euphoric track “DJ”. And it’s a change for which Anders makes little excuses: “on this record, we went away from the band sound. This record is a lot more electronic... We started working with computers and that was a totally new thing for us, and it had a great impact on how the record sounds.”

For a second album, this drastic divergence from a tried-and-tested formula is a brave move. Are the band scared that fans might not like the new sound? “We, of course, thought about that,” Anders laughs. “We did this music also for ourselves. We wanted to challenge ourselves and try to make something new this time. I just hope that people can still hear that it’s us.”

However the sound changes, the core notion of Alphabeat as a band responsible for producing music to make people happy is something which Anders is insistent has stayed the same. Fighting against “a lot of dark and dull music on the radio”, Alphabeat introduced their own stream of unashamed feel-good pop. Nevertheless, the band is learning to channel its happy sound in different ways on this new record.

“I guess this time around we’ve had a theory that if we could sort of turn up the dance vibes and then tone down the happiness, things would kind of balance out,” says Anders. “Because in our minds, whenever we start to dance, we feel happy. And if we could just make people dance, we could make them happy, and so the songs could be a bit more dark.” Of course, most of the lyrics here still relate to the dance floor, but where Alphabeat venture a little more towards the personal, as they do on “Heart Failure”, it’s an interesting juxtaposition: happy dance music laid over with lyrics of heartbreak and loss.

But it’s not only the release of their new album which looks set to make 2010 a year to remember for Alphabeat. They’ve also announced that they will be Lady Gaga’s support act on the UK leg of her Monster Ball tour. “We’re not die-hard fans,” Anders admits, “...But we do like her! I think when you’re a big fan of pop music and pop culture it’s very difficult not to be a fan of Lady Gaga, because she’s just so special in providing a lot of her own material. I think she’s very, very talented.”

But one question remains: what do the band think is the secret to their success in both Denmark and the UK? Anders pauses. “I think what made us interesting in the UK was that we did something that wasn’t just a cheaper copy of what you already had. In Denmark, if something big comes out of the UK, like the Arctic Monkeys, everyone will just play music inspired by the Arctic Monkeys, but just not as good, but we did something different.”

This makes perfect sense. If there’s anything that Joe McElderry’s festive dethroning taught us, it’s that people are bored of the same old factory pop, and it’s perhaps this daring to be different that sets Alphabeat aside. Whether or not the risk will pay off, only time will tell. But for now, when the pop music is this good, it’s hard not to applaud them.