Nobody could accuse Sheffield rock foursome Arctic Monkeys of being "too British" to translate across the pond anymore.

For their third album, Humbug, the quartet chose hard-rocking Queens Of The Stone Age frontman-guitarist Josh Homme as co-producer, while Monkeys singer-guitarist-lyricist Alex Turner moved to Brooklyn earlier this year with girlfriend and MTV host Alexa Chung.

"I'm hoping (Turner's) going to get a mid-Atlantic accent," joked Monkeys drummer Matt Helders, down the line from Minneapolis before the band's stop at Kool Haus tonight.

"He sounds more and more English actually. He does speak clearer in New York than he has to us."

Turns out the Monkeys met Homme previously at a shared gig in Boston.

"We knew he was a nice guy," said Helders. "So when it came to deciding on who we wanted to work with this time, we said it as an idea, but nothing too serious, and then it kind of escalated a little bit. And we sent him some demos and he suggested that we go out to the desert (Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree, Calif.,), do some recording with him. It was great, like straight away we kind of hit it off."

Helders, who along with Monkeys guitarist Jamie Cook and bassist Nick O'Malley still lives in Sheffield, said going to the American desert was a first-time experience for the band.

"It wasn't like anywhere else we'd ever been before. We didn't know what to expec -- it was just big, with lot of space and stuff. The actual Joshua Trees themselves looked pretty strange."

As for staying at the Joshua Tree Inn where American rocker Gram Parsons died, Helders said it was a real introduction to that artist and his music.

"It was strange. I think Nick was in the actual room where he allegedly died. A room with like a Ouija board outside and like a shrine, different beer and alcohol, and a little guitar -- people leave stuff for him."

But the Homme influence didn't translate into nearly as heavy an album as people were expecting from the Monkeys, whose 2006 breakthrough, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, remains the fastest-selling debut album in British music history.

"When we finished touring last year we had an idea that we'd probably make a heavy album but by the time we did it, it didn't turn out that way," said Helders.

"We recorded quite a bit and some of it was heavier, but then the (songs) that were the best ones just made more sense to make a better record rather than just like a heavy thing."

Reportedly Turner was listening to a lot of Cream and Jimi Hendrix before making Humbug, a name the band were tickled to later find out meant "a hoax or a fraud."

"(Josh) kind of pushed the guitarists in the band a little more, Alex and Jamie, he encouraged them a bit more to do solos and stuff, which they'd never really done," said Helders.

Helders, a longtime Queens fan, said it was a treat to get encouragement from Homme, whose latest project, Them Crooked Vultures, sees him working with Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters) on drums and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) on bass.

"He paid enough compliments for me to know that I was really alright. Obviously it was always in the back of my mind, like the people he had worked with, the drummers (Grohl and Queens' Joey Castillo), are people I look up to in a big way and stuff. It was actually quite nice to get the seal of approval from him."

Turns out Them Crooked Vultures, who have two Canadian shows, including Oct. 9 at Sound Academy, recently opened for Arctic Monkeys at London's Brixton Academy in August as a surprise for the audience.

"They went a bit mad when they walked out," chuckled Helders.