Arctic Monkeys rocker Alex Turner stayed focused while writing tracks for the band's new album by spending hours playing darts.

The Cornerstone hitmakers released their fifth record Am in September (13) and frontman Turner has previously revealed how he whiled away long nights at his home in Los Angeles working on lyrics for the tracks.

Now he has opened up about his odd way of concentrating his mind during lengthy writing sessions - he would endlessly throw darts at a board while perfecting his rhymes.

He tells Mojo magazine, "Well, like, you get that spark - you've got the jigsaw going, the blade's moving and that, but then you've still got to craft the thing together. And that's almost what the playing darts thing seems like. Measure twice, cut once sort of thing. It's like this constant tussle, the measurement.

"There's something about doing the darts. I suppose you take your mind off it to some extent and then you can get somewhere. But there's a weird symmetry between hitting a treble 20 and it starting to align, like, that weird second verse thing."