The great Suede 'guess-the-album-name' debate is officially over.

Thanks to bassist Matt Osman, the world can now rest knowing that the follow up to the band's 1996 'Coming Up' will be called 'Head Music'.

Osman, talking to NME from Eden Studios in London said the album title wasn't meant to be taken on any deep sexual or druggy level. "It just summed up the music, because it's music in the head, it's not really body music," he said.

Tracks on the album, due out on nude/Columbia in the UK in May, include 'She's In Fashion' and 'Asbetos'. Both of these titles were hotly tipped at various times to be title tracks. Osman claims, however, that the band didn't know what the album was going to be called until earlier this year - and then decided to play a game with the fan club by releasing one letter at a time.

He explained: "Saul (Galpern), head of nude [Records, the band's UK label] was hassling for a title, and Brett said, 'I'll tell you one letter at a time until you can guess it.'"

Only last week, after the letters 'H' and 'E' were released, rumours of the album being called 'Heroine' were being circulated on the Internet.

The album will be the band's first in three years. Osman describes it as "really varied, really electric, very modern and quite spiky and hard-edged for us".

His favourite track on the disc is a song called 'Down': "With 'Down' and another track called 'He's Gone', when we wrote them they were pretty traditional ballads. But through being in the studio they've changed into something else. They're more modern-sounding than anything we've done."

The 'modern-sound' can be attributed to noted producer Steve Osbourne - who along with Paul Oakenfold makes up the Perfecto production team - has worked with U2 and the Happy Mondays (among others).

Osbourne's involvement sparked rumours of the band going in a more dancey direction. This is something Osman denies: "It's not dancey at all. It's certainly groovier and there's a lot of tracks that are just one or two chords. There's certainly a lot more tracks that work on the level of a groove than we've done before, but that's it."

As for the makeup of the album, most of the tracks are Brett Anderson compositions. Some, however, have been penned by guitarist Richard Oakes and keyboardist Neil Codling - both new comers to the band.

The exact track listing and number of tracks has yet to be determined, but Osman states "There's going to be about 13 or 14 tracks. It's certainly got a lot more variety than 'Coming Up'."

The May album release will be preceded in the UK by an undetermined April single. Osman says there are at least five tracks that are being considered for single status. Current favourites include 'She's In Fashion' ("a big summery pop song that's probably as light as anything we've done") and 'Savoir Faire' ("It started off almost as a nursery rhyme, a really simple song, then it became quite an odd, quite spiky little thing.")

The band plan to hit the road in April, but no dates have officially been announced.