Las Vegas rockers hope to record new songs before the end of the year.
By Chris Harris, with reporting by Matt Elias

Panic At The Disco
Photo: MTV News

For the members of Panic at the Disco, the rest of the year's pretty much mapped out.

At this very moment, the boys are in the Far East, where they'll be playing in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manila and Jakarta. On August 2, they'll be performing at the MTV Asia Awards, hosted by Jared Leto. Next, it'll be off to Australia for a string of dates, and then back to the States for the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards on September 7.

Then they'll be heading out with Dashboard Confessional, the Plain White T's and the Cab for the inaugural "Rock Band" Live Tour, which kicks off October 5 in San Diego. That trek will hit 29 cities, wrapping up November 14 in Houston.

After that, they'll take some time off for the holidays before hitting the studio to begin work on a follow-up to this year's Pretty. Odd., bassist Jon Walker told MTV News this week.

You see, the guys haven't just been touring. In fact, they will be doing a lot more than playing live gigs the next few months. They've been writing and will continue to write material for their next LP, he said.

"It was pretty much the same with the last record," Walker said. "We've been working on acoustic guitars and then trying to bring it all together as a full band. We're not sure what's going to happen yet, but we've been having a lot of fun. We haven't stopped writing songs since we stopped recording [Pretty. Odd.], because we have a lot to write about."

So, what's the new stuff sounding like?

"It's sounding 'pretty awesome,' which is probably what we're going to call the next record," guitarist Ryan Ross joked. "We've got quite a few new ideas and songs we've been working on, and we're hoping to record some of that stuff by the end of the year."

The band wouldn't guesstimate when the next record would be finished. So, in the meantime, they'll be releasing a video for their next single. Problem is, they won't talk about which song that'll be.

"I can tell you it's on our [latest] record — it's in the middle somewhere," Ross joked. "Somewhere between track six and track 12, I guess."

Regardless of which song the band settles on, Walker claims Panic might consider directing the clip themselves.

"We've been thinking about it. We know we'll be doing a video when we return from Asia next month," he said. "We want to make it ourselves. I've been Googling 'music video direction.' I think they have one of those 'Dummies' books on it."

• Panic, Dashboard Co-Headline 'Rock Band' Live Tour
• Panic At The Disco Preach The Green Gospel To Fans

• Panic at the Disco