fun's "We Are Young" is one of the biggest songs of 2012. Their second album Some Nights has been out in the U.S. since March, but was only just released today in England. Singer Nate Ruess spoke with NME about the band's evolution since their debut Aim & Ignite and the role hip-hop star Kanye West played in the creation of Some Nights.

Asked about the inspiration behind 'Some Nights', Ruess said that he'd become obsessed with West's fifth album and had enlisted five people who worked on it for Fun's new album.

He said of this: "Kanye West's 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' changed everything for me. I really only listened to hip-hop when making this album, but I didn't use it as inspiration until 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' came out. It's hip-hop production with real theatricality."

Then asked if you could hear the influence, Ruess added: "You can definitely hear it. We worked with four or five people who worked with that album, so there was the elements that those people supplied and then there was the heartbeat, which was taken from Kanye's 'Runaway'. That's in about half the songs on the album. It was all I was listening to, I was obsessed with it."

Ruess also spoke about how he believed the band had moved on sonically from their debut 'Aim And Ignite', adding: "The first album was just us getting used to one another. I think we did too much and there was a rush to get it out. We've learned a lot since that record came out. We work a lot better now, each band member's role is more defined. Everybody wanted to create an album this time, rather than a band."

While on a media tour of England, fun covered Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" with friend and label-mate Hayley Williams of Paramore. Ruess spoke about the collaboration that almost didn't happen.

Speaking to NME, singer Nate Ruess said that the band were happy with the cover, but that it had been thrown into chaos when multi-instrumentalist Andrew Dost contracted food poisoning overnight and they had to perform without him.

Asked about the performance, Ruess said: "I think it went well. It was a pretty hectic morning, we were never sure how linking Hayley into the show was going to go, it seemed like a pretty daunting technological task."

He continued: "Then, to top it off, Andrew got food poisoning and suddenly we had no piano, which was the base of our original version. The fact that we got through it was unbelievable."

Ruess added that though they'd performed onstage many times with Williams, this is the first time they'd arranged something together. He added: "We've never worked together, she'd always come up and sing with us when we were on tour, so we've sort of worked together."

Then asked if he'd heard anything of the new Paramore record or if he'd be making an appearance, Ruess said: "I'm not going to be involved at all. I'm going to be a fan from a far. I think we might meet up in LA and hang out in a few weeks, but I like to stay as far away as possible from any artists who are friends. I refuse to listen to demos, so I've not heard anything."

The soundcloud media for fun. f/ Hayley from Paramore covering Gotye's "Somebody I Used To Know" will not embed using our blogging platform. Please click here to listen!