Zooey Deschanel
Photo: Larry Busacca/Getty Images

Last month, Zooey Deschanel set the indie world on its ear (and gave hope to pasty white guys the world over) when it was announced that she was engaged to Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard. Now, she's looking to do the same thing again, only with an album.

Or, more specifically, a second album ... of She & Him songs.

After bowling over fans and critics alike with last year's Volume One, Deschanel is hard at work on the follow-up, writing and recording once again with She & Him musical partner M. Ward.

"We're working on it. I can't say exactly when it will be finished. ... Give me some time! I need a break!" she laughed. "I've been writing a lot, and we've been recording some, so, hopefully, I don't know. I don't want to put a number on it, but it's going well and, I mean, it's fun, as always."

Deschanel stopped short of revealing any additional details about the new S&H album — after all, when MTV News spoke to her, it was at Sundance, where she was on hand to promote her upcoming role in the karaoke-fueled romantic comedy "500 Days of Summer" — but she was more than willing to admit that making the film was easy. And not just because she's musically inclined.

"Yeah, I'm a romantic, but I'm not a romantic in the traditional sense. I like to romanticize what happens to me," Deschanel said. "Whatever happens to me — you could quantify it as good or bad — I romanticize it. I think along the lines of 'When that thing happened, it made me who I am.' That kind of thing. It's a different way of being romantic."

And will that sense of romance carry over to the new She & Him album? Will there be a cameo or three from her newly minted fiancé?

"That's none of your beeswax," she laughed. "Time will tell."

• She and Him
• M. Ward
• Death Cab For Cutie

Ben Gibbard and Zooey Deschanel perform together in August 2008
Photo: Timothy Norris/Getty Images

Perhaps we should call them the First Couple of Indie Rock.

Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard and actress/ She & Him singer Zooey Deschanel are engaged, sources confirmed to MTV News on Monday (December 29).

The confirmation comes hours after many celebrity gossip sites had incorrectly reported that Deschanel was engaged to a different musician: AFI bassist Hunter Burgan. (Head over to the Newsroom blog to find out what Burgan had to say about Deschanel's engagement.) According to a "source close to the couple," cited by Us Weekly, Deschanel, 28, and Gibbard, 32, are "so thrilled. ... Zooey was swept off her feet, and Ben is so excited."

In addition to her roles in films like "Elf" and "Yes Man," Deschanel fronts the critically lauded She & Him duo with singer/songwriter M. Ward. Their debut album, Volume One, was featured on several 2008 "Best Of" lists — including ours.

Deschanel had previously dated actor/musician Jason Schwartzman and Mickey Madden from Maroon Five. Various Web sites are reporting that the couple have been dating for almost a year, and they shared the stage together — dueting on a cover of the Everly Brothers' "Dream" — at an Obama fundraiser in August.

Deschanel's She & Him released their debut album on indie stalwart Merge Records earlier this year. Gibbard's Death Cab released a string of albums on tiny Barsuk Records from 1998-2004 (not to mention the ultra-successful Postal Service album Give Up on Sub Pop in '03) until making the leap to the majors with 2005's Plans. In May, DCFC's Narrow Stairs debuted at #1 on the Billboard albums chart.

• Death Cab For Cutie
• She and Him

She & Him's M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel
Photo: MTV News

When Matt met Zooey, it was, naturally, on the set of a movie. They bonded over their love of British singer/songwriter Richard Thompson and decided to make an album. This is how these things generally tend to happen.

"We met on the set of this film 'The Go-Getter,' and the director of the movie wanted us to do a duet for the end credits," Zooey said. "We did a Richard & Linda Thompson song, and that was one of the first things that was exciting about talking to Matt. We had a lot of the same favorite songs and favorite artists, and we admire people that I don't necessarily bring up in conversations, because most people have no idea what I'm talking about."

"I had heard Zooey sing before, in 'Elf,' and I knew she was a great singer, but I didn't know she wrote songs," Matt added. "Because you don't really expect actors to write great songs, and her songs are incredible. So that was one of the funnest parts of working with her: surprising people."

OK, so you should probably know that Zooey is actress Zooey Deschanel. Matt is musician M. Ward. They record together under the alias She & Him. Their debut album, the appropriately named Volume One, is a strummy, sunny ode to '50s country, '60s pop and '70s balladry. Deschanel wrote 10 of the album's 13 songs — tales of lost loves and broken hearts — and delivers them all in a breathy, bellwether-clear voice. Ward heaps on dusty, sun-dappled guitars and filters it all through a gauzy veil of production. The whole thing is w-a-a-a-y better than anything else in the actress-slash-musician canon (we're looking at you, Scarlett). You have every right to be surprised by that fact.

"Most music on the radio hearkens back to the '60s and '70s ... mainly older records that have been my biggest inspiration since I started making records," Ward said. "It turned out that [Zooey and I] grew up listening to a lot of the same records, so it was a fun challenge for me to get those atmospherics across in the production side of things."

"My favorite songwriters are mostly people that were writing a lot of music in the '60s and '70s. People like Carole King and Smokey Robinson. There are oh so many," Deschanel added. "So I sort of had those as, like, the ultimate songs in the world, in my head, you know? I had those people as the ultimate songwriters, so [the album] was like making a mixtape. Every day, when we were recording, I had, like, a new 80-minute mixtape!"

The duo had originally worked via e-mail — Deschanel wrote all the lyrics and music herself, and would send them to Ward for tinkering — but decided to put the finishing touches on Volume One in Ward's Portland, Oregon, studio. They released it on North Carolina's stalwart Merge Records in March, played a series of standing-room-only gigs at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, and played a handful of shows. And now, despite Deschanel's busy schedule (she'll appear in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" next month), She & Him are already thinking about starting work on Volume Two. After all, this is how these things tend to happen.

"We're getting the ball rolling," Ward said. "It's too early to say, because we've just started."

"I'm just writing some stuff now for Volume Two," Deschanel added. "We've done some demos. We like to work in an improvisational way, so it'll have its own special personality."

• She & Him: Musical Match Made In Heaven

• She and Him