After a short period of development regarding the ideas of the album, on March 6, 2007, the band arrived at a cabin in the rural mountains of Mount Charleston, Nevada and began the writing process for the new album, "Cricket & Clover". After recording the new tracks and performing them live over the summer, the band returned to its native Las Vegas as well as the group's old rehearsal studio, where the band members wrote their debut record. Songs such as "Scarlet" and "It's True Love" have had lyrics found. One track from Cricket & Clover, Nearly Witches, was remastered and added to "Vices & Virtues" in 2011. The band grew uninterested in the songs previously written and by August scrapped the entire new album (which Ross later revealed was "three-quarters" done) and started over. "We wanted to approach these songs in the most basic form," Ross said. "We wrote them all on one acoustic guitar and with someone singing. I think that we kind of skipped that part of songwriting on the first record, and this time we're sort of paying attention to that. […] We've written a bunch of songs since we've been home Vegas. I think it's the most fun and the happiest we've been since we started." With simplicity the new focus and the old album shelved, the group settled in and began recording what would become "Pretty. Odd." In October, the band entered the Studio at the Palms at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas to begin recording the album.