The idea was to marry sonic experimentation with pop structures, while primary songwriters Chris Keating and Anand Wilder explored a variety of themes such as boxing, addiction, and paranoia.

[1] The band followed its success by co-headlining a tour with synthpop duo MGMT and by part-producing and playing bass guitar on Bat for Lashes' Two Suns, a dream pop record released in 2009.

[2] The same year, a new Yeasayer track, "Tightrope", was used in Red Hot Organization's Dark Was the Night compilation in support of HIV/AIDS sufferers,[3] while vocalist and keyboardist Chris Keating sang and co-wrote Simian Mobile Disco's single "Audacity of Huge", from the band's electronic record Temporary Pleasure.

[2] Backed by a new good-sized independent label, Secretly Canadian, and a bigger recording budget,[4] Yeasayer started work on a second studio album in February 2009.

Keating was joined by guitarist and keyboardist Anand Wilder, bassist Ira Wolf Tuton, and engineer Steve Revitte, but not All Hour Cymbals drummer Luke Fasano.

[12] On November 3, 2009, Yeasayer previewed material from the album at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, while "Ambling Alp" was released as a promotional single digitally and on a limited 12" vinyl edition.

[12] Acknowledging the full album's Internet leak, Yeasayer posted a Twitter status on December 10 that read "Presents are always spoiled for those who open them before they are supposed to".

[14] The cover art for Odd Blood was revealed the following day, a stylized bust design by artist Benjamin Phelan based on the vision of "a future with a distorted biology";[15] the chest portion is "sculpted from virtual clay" with a force feedback motion-capture device.

[6] On January 15–16, Odd Blood preview listening parties were organized across selected US independent record stores, where promotional vinyl copies could be purchased.

[19] Odd Blood was released in Europe through Mute Records on February 8, and a day later in North America by Secretly Canadian;[18] the album's mail distribution in the latter region was delayed by a blizzard.

"Mondegreen" is Keating's attempt to mix the late 1970s drug-fueled paranoia of David Bowie with the current 24-hour news cycle and "the sort of absurd, psychotic rants" of Fox newscasters Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

[22] For his first track on Odd Blood, "Madder Red", Wilder wrote a song in the vein of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy", "about being a weak man, a gambler".

Keating then sampled the solo and built a song around it; his a cappella singing was recorded both conventionally in a booth and in the studio's basement with a distant miking scheme inspired by David Bowie's 1977 album "Heroes".

For "Love Me Girl", Wilder used loops to evoke the emotions in the final scene of the movie Trainspotting—in which a character finds a sum of money in a locker—followed by an R&B style similar to Justin Timberlake's.

[22] The seventh track on Odd Blood, "Rome", features beats taken from Moroccan and Syrian dance music that Keating's wife had on her iPod, while for "Strange Reunions", Yeasayer created a short song under three minutes by exploring unconventional time signatures in different parts in the style of fellow New York City band Dirty Projectors.

"[22] Media response to Odd Blood was generally favorable; aggregating website Metacritic reports a normalized rating of 78 out of 100 based on 36 critical reviews.

[24] Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune described Yeasayer's new material as a consolidation of the work on All Hour Cymbals into "a series of shapely pop songs"; he stated, "The album aims for pleasure rather than introspection, and most of the time, it hits the mark.

[25] Zach Schonfeld of PopMatters praised the album's "jungle-dense beats and rainbow synths" and wrote that Yeasayer "avoided the sophomore slump the only way they know how: by fearlessly dismantling everything that made their debut a safe bet.

"[30] Todd Martens of Los Angeles Times stated that Odd Blood "ultimately reveals that beneath all the weird sounds, tribal harmonies and otherworldly textures, Yeasayer are still a bunch of indie-rock sentimentalists",[7] while Tim Chester of NME wrote that the album is "a musical package holiday you can take vicariously".

[3] Amanda Farah of Clash explained that Odd Blood is "an unabashed pop record that anyone should be proud to play at full volume",[32] while Paul Terefenko of NOW concluded, "Who'd have thought the psych-folk pile, already teetering on the brink of over-saturation, would peak with Yeasayer's second album?