After working with Markus Dravs for their first two albums, the band decided to hire producer James Ford and The National's Aaron Dessner.

The album marks a departure from the group's folk rock sound, as they abandoned their signature acoustic instruments (such as banjo and upright bass) for electric ones and added a session drummer to fill out their rhythm section.

In September 2013, following the end of the world tour in support of their second album Babel, Mumford & Sons began what they thought would be a lengthy break, but found themselves back at work only five months later.

The band then recorded Wilder Mind at AIR Studios in London with producer James Ford, who also traded off drumming duties with Mumford.

[8][9] Mumford & Sons made their live return at the 375 capacity Oslo, Hackney on 8 March 2015 with an intimate show for family and friends.

The second single from Wilder Mind, "The Wolf" premiered on BBC Radio 1 on 9 April 2015,[13] and was made available to download straight after, with the official audio being uploaded to the band's YouTube channel.

[27] The song premiered on BBC Radio 1 and was made available to download and stream straight after, with the official audio being uploaded to the band's YouTube channel.

[30] The song premiered on BBC Radio 1 on 9 April 2015 and was made available to download and stream straight after, with the official audio being uploaded to the band's YouTube channel.

[45] Andy Gill of The Independent felt that the band's musical transition towards more guitar-oriented instrumentation had been successful, singling out the album's "surging electric guitar riffs with synth and organ textures" for praise.

[39] Leonie Cooper of NME was also positive, noting Aaron Dessner's large influence on the album's production and concluding: "Still missing the banjos?

[40] Garrett Kamps of Billboard stated that "not only does Wilder Mind reintroduce the band members as rock gods worthy of the title, it does so without changing what fans cherished most about them in the first place: their songwriting, their sentiment, their gusto.

"[46] For Rolling Stone, Jon Dolan wrote that "the sentiment is Springsteen, the guitars are straight-up Strokes, and even if it's not going to work out for the relationship in this song, the music itself bristles with self-assurance.

"[35] While noting that "brief flashes of newfound power and sophistication hint at a potentially fruitful plugged-in future for Mumford & Sons", James Rainis of Slant Magazine felt that the album as a whole was unremarkable, criticising its "compositional predictability" and "tired lyrical sentiments".

[47] Pitchfork's Maud Deitch called Wilder Mind "a 'rock' record in the least interesting sense of that word—a pastiche of the genre's most common elements, from big percussion, electric guitars, and warm synths, to poignant but ultimately surface-level lyrics".

[41] PopMatters's Brice Ezell commented on how the band had "stripped away the artifice from their ostensible Americana aesthetic to reveal the boilerplate alt-rock that forms its core circuitry".