Ra Ra Riot just released their sophomore record, The Orchard, last week; this week Seattle fans have two chances to see the band perform — on Sunday, they’ll be playing Bumbershoot’s Broad Street Stage at 5:45 p.m., and the next day they’ll play a free, all ages in-store at Easy Street in Queen Anne at 7 p.m. Last week I spoke with guitarist Milo Bonacci via telephone while he was in Brooklyn gearing up for the band’s tour.

What are the ideas and inspirations behind The Orchard?

A lot of the songs have to do with place and having to leave a place that is inspiring. Like the song “Kansai” is about finding inspiration somewhere and having to leave it behind, and the fear of losing that inspiration.

We were living together in a house on a farm in upstate New York. It was a really stark contrast to what we had been doing for the previous couple of years. We’d been on the road for so long, never really staying anywhere for more than a day or two, and also never really having a chance to work on the creative side of things. Getting the opportunity to stay put and sort of remove ourselves from the scene and getting to write songs together was really rejuvenating in a lot of ways.

I grew up in that region. I had stayed in that house before, and actually one of the first songs that the band worked on together was originally conceived in that house. It was a significant place.

After the success of your first record, were you afraid of the so-called sophomore slump?

What I was afraid of most was just not getting excited about what we were making and what we were writing. But I think the whole process, that creative time that we did have, was really rewarding.

Why was that a fear of yours?

It had just been a long time since we all sat down and had to write together. I think just the nature of being in a band and the constant touring, I think you lose that balance between input and output.

What was the collaborative process of writing The Orchard like?

Ideas seemed to come from everywhere. Different people would contribute songs and everybody would work on it together. We worked from morning to night. We’re always inspired by curiosity and what happens next, how two people’s contributions might come together. We spent a lot of time disassembling the different pieces and seeing how they would fit together in different ways.

How did you originally decide to put together a band with so many instrumental elements?

I’d always really loved cellos and was curious about trying to integrate that into a band. It was kind of just who I could find and who was willing to try to work on some songs together. And I figured the more variation and the more different types of instruments, the more possible flavors there would be, it might open up some songwriting possibilities.

Are you trying to write a different kind of music than what’s out there?

We did not set out to write a dance record or anything like that. When we first started we were playing a lot of house parties and basements, and our goal was to be loud and make people move. I think not being in that context anymore, we were free to a little more dynamic range. We were looking to explore a greater range of dynamics.