More about: Polica

The video for Polica's latest single begins innocuously enough. Children's voices happily yell, in unison, "The letter P!", as chirpy Sesame Street muzak is piped out in the background. Within ten seconds, though, it's given way to stock footage of police raids, as the sinister, synthy intro to 'Wedding' rings out. It's jarring as hell - deliberately so.

This unsettling mix of innocence and corruption, of light and darkness, finds its way into much of the band's third album, United Crushers. It's an album inspired at once by anger over unjust deaths and the infinite promise of new life.

The impact of Leaneagh's pregnancy, and the subsequent birth of her baby, lingers quietly throughout the album - as it does in our interview too. "He's just hungry," she says apologetically, as the baby's cries sporadically punctuate our Skype call. When I apologise for interrupting feeding time, she says simply, "That's OK, it's how it is."

You said that you wanted United Crushers to be your "best work." Did you ever feel like you were putting too much pressure on yourself?

"No, no. I think the third one - compared to the second one, which felt like a lot more pressure - the third one felt a lot more freeing. It's the last one with our record label, it felt kind of like the end of the trilogy. The second one didn't do awesomely, we didn't get tons of great reviews, so by the third one you're like, 'You know what? Let's do what we want to do, something that we're really excited about, and music that inspires us'.

The hardest thing was I was pregnant, so I was getting motivated to do things when I didn't feel well. 'Someway' was a song where I had horrible morning sickness, so it was kind of the thing that I would rally for that day. It gave me something to distract myself from not feeling well. It helped me to really channel a lot of thoughts that were going through my head, and a lot of things I wanted to talk about, so for me, writing a record is always really cathartic and it feels good."

When female artists have children, it tends to dominate the conversation much more than it does for men, with regards to having both a child and career - but you've sort of deliberately made it front and centre, particularly with the album artwork.

"It's funny how little of the record is about being pregnant. It isn't the main focal point. Even with the artwork, we were playing round with the ideas of being a woman and violence, and then just because I was pregnant, and it did take up a lot of my head space preparing for it and everything, it felt like it needed to be included. It felt like it was appropriate.

"Someone in an interview asked me about how, they considered me a feminist, and now I had a baby, so I have all these things that I can't do anymore, so is it contradictory that I'm a feminist and also decided to have a baby? Which was a very strange conversation. Part of being an artist, you feel like when you start doing interviews you have to explain yourself, explain your life decisions, in contrast with your art. I know it greatly affected the father of the baby, on his art too, that he had a kid, because it just really throws your life upside-down.

"I think the main influence that it had on the record was in general, when you're a parent, even if you're not a woman, if you're a parent, you spend more time engaged in the world,, and around kids. I spend a lot of my time in schools, around parks - so in that sense I'm engaged a little bit more with the world, and it's not something that I think is better, it's just different. I have a different perspective. When you're about to have a baby you're also thinking about the world that you're bringing this kid into."

Was that in your mind when you made the video for 'Wedding' - mixing the innocence of Sesame Street with themes of police brutality? Were you thinking about what sort of world these kids were growing up in?

"Yes definitely. In Minneapolis we have a really active Black Lives Matter organisation here, and a lot of people were bringing their kids to protest about the shootings, and all these black men and boys getting shot, and the conversation of how you talk to your kids about this. Wanting our kids to be involved and wanting to raise up people who care about the oppression of others and will fight for what's right, but still also in a way that allows them to still be kids. Speaking to kids as highly intelligent people, and people that can understand ideas and can be a part of change."

Did you discuss the themes with the kids in the video?

"Uh huh. They're all kids of my friends, and a lot of those kids did go to Black Lives Matters protests, or have been to protests this summer, a lot of their parents are involved in activism. I sent the video treatment to their parents, and made sure that it was OK that they were in it, and then we had lots of people on set talking to them about the different ideas, and then also just asked some of them questions. That was what we were looking for too, what was their insight about what was going on? What was their insight about the world? Because you can learn a lot, especially if they're four or five years old and they haven't started going to school yet. They have a lot of really amazing ideas because they haven't quite been corrupted yet."

And how was the reaction? It seems like - particularly given the reaction to Beyonce's 'Formation' video - some people feel like art and politics shouldn't mix.

Yeah, I know. I think it's been pretty positive. One person commented, 'There are a lot of good cops, you should educate yourself about the truth', and my response to that was like, 'Yeah, I totally agree that there are good cops out there, and I have educated myself.' In Minneapolis, we're working on getting cops so that they they have liability insurance, like doctors or people in the CIA and FBI. So if they do beat someone up, if they hurt someone, if they kill someone, they have to pay, and they have to be held accountable and their insurance goes up. Basically to start making cops accountable, so that the good cops - there are good cops trying to do good things, and I'm not anti-cop - it's just about holding people accountable. You can't have a group in society, that are supposed to be protecting and serving people, brutalising people and not being held accountable for it. It's gone on too long.

I think you always want to be careful that you're not trying to appropriate, and you're not trying to capitalise on something, but the argument that artists shouldn't engage in politics because they shouldn't profit off it? That would be horrible if artists stopped engaging in the issues of today. I think it's the job of artists to engage with the world and to reflect what's going on. Also, no-one's really profiting from music."

Then there's people who think musicians aren't engaging with the world as much as they used to.

"Beyonce wearing those Black Panthers outfits at the Super Bowl, it was really bold and brave. She didn't need to do that, and for a pretty conservative situation - the Super Bowl is usually pretty conservative - I thought it was a great opportunity to use her influence and her recognition to make people think about things. And to force people to be uncomfortable, to force people to have conversations. Even somebody like John Legend, I don't know much about his music, but I know he's been really active in working on mass incarcerations in America, and getting those laws changed. [Then there's] Kendrick Lamar, just rap in general, often reflects issues in society that need to be changed."

It's probably human instinct to think things aren't the same as they were in the good old days.

"Yeah, I mean to be fair, there is that criticism that in this day and age, people seem really involved because they tweet about an issue, or they sign an online petition, and so there's this false sense of being involved."

It's easy to feel like you're being politically engaged when often all you're doing is engaging with other people who already agree with you. We're all patting ourselves on the back about how progressive we are.

"So true. And I've been guilty of signing those online petitions and then suddenly realising it's not doing anything. But you know, there were a lot of protests this past summer. The upsetting thing is that it does feel like people are just as involved, but they're getting silenced, and they're getting suffocated out by tanks and tear gas, and it's getting harder to really be heard. It seems like it doesn't matter anymore if you protest. I guess we have to find new ways to be activists, and new ways to make change, because it seems like the media and the police and the government are really good at silencing protests, and ignoring them. It seems harder to make even a huge protest effective."

The album title itself - that was a slogan painted on a concrete building in Minneapolis, right?

"Minneapolis used to be home to a lot of grain industry, so we have a lot of grain silos, so it's written over those - United Crushers - so it's kind of an homage to our city, an homage to the crew, the graffiti crew United Crushers. They're definitely very anti-establishment and fuck with the system quite a bit, and who I inspire to be more like. And then it's just the idea of making good shit, and uniting together to crush back against things that are crushing you."

Polica embark on a UK tour in support of their latest album, United Crushers, in October. See full dates below, and get tickets and more information here.

Oct 14: Leeds, UK – Stylus
Oct 16: Glasgow, UK – SWG3
Oct 18: Bristol, UK – Anson Rooms
Oct 19: London, UK – Roundhouse
Oct 20: Birmingham, UK – Institute Library
Oct 21: Manchester, UK – The Ritz
Oct 23: Brighton, UK – Concorde 2

More about: Polica