The Australian band Hiatus Kaiyote emerged in 2013 with an amorphous sound that pulled in rock, funk and soul, and caught the ear of Questlove, Erykah Badu and Q-Tip.
“Ultimately, I became obsessed with the concept of impermanence,” Saalfield, 32, said on a video call, speaking from an almost pitch-black room in her home in Fitzroy, a suburb of Melbourne.
The band — which includes the bassist Paul Bender, the keyboardist Simon Mavin and the drummer Perrin Moss — incorporated that urgency into “Mood Valiant,” its first album in six years, which came out on Friday.
The band formed more than a decade ago, after Bender saw Saalfield playing a pink guitar in a small club and handed her a business card.
“It was such a multitude of things,” Bender said of the group’s second album, which is packed with directional shifts.
The band had completed instrumentals for “Mood Valiant” when Saalfield learned she had breast cancer — the disease that killed her mother — and she returned to Australia for an emergency mastectomy.
“Ultimately, when I got sick, I was like, ‘What do you want from life? Who are you and what do you want to leave behind?’” Saalfield said.
On a trip to Rio de Janeiro to record with the noted Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai, who contributed string and horn arrangements for the tropicalia-infused “Get Sun,” Saalfield stayed in the Amazon rainforest for 10 days, and took part in the kambo ritual of wiping frog poison onto her skin to remove the toxins in her body.
With its warped strings, dusty drums and introspective lyrics that embrace life, “Mood Valiant” has the feel of a ’70s Brazilian psych album.
If you can reach people in their darkest hour and comfort them, that’s what it’s for.