Kelley Deal says the Breeders play a game on the road where one person in the van says a band name, then the next person says another band name using the last letter.

"I'm going to give you a band name," Deal says on the phone. "My band name is going to be Bread."

"OK," I say, "The Decemberists, 'cause I just saw them the other night."

"Sweet," she says. "My name has to start with an S. I'll say Sepulchura."

Before I reach for Aerosmith, she says, "We've been playing this game for two days, with no repeats."

Just in the Breeders van itself, they have a few impressive names to toss around: drummer Jose Medeles (Face to Face, 22 Jacks, Ben Harper), bassist Mando Lopez (Fear) and, of course, the Deal twins Kim (Pixies, The Amps) and Kelley (Kelley Deal 6000, Last Hard Men).

At the moment, the focus is on the Breeders, the band Kim originally formed with Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses during a Pixies hiatus for the Steve Albini-produced 1990 debut album "Pod." Donelly left, and Kelley joined the Breeders a few years later for 1993's "The Last Splash," which went platinum thanks to the band's explosive signature hit "Cannonball."

It has been kind of a messy history since then. Kelley was busted for heroin possession in 1995 and went into rehab, bringing the Breeders to a near halt until their reformation for 2002's darker, more lo-fi outing "Title TK." Since then, Kim has split her time between the Breeders and on-and-off reunions with the Pixies.

The Breeders released an acclaimed fourth album, "Mountain Battles," in April 2008, and now have freshened the catalog with the four-song EP "Fate to Fatal."

"We were touring last year to support 'Mountain Battles' and I think people are under the impression sometimes that you do an album, you tour it and one day you say, 'OK, today I'm going to start writing for the next record,' " Kelley says. "And that doesn't work like that. You're always kind of writing. So as we were touring last year, we'd come home and go down to the basement to start working on new stuff. We started accumulating these songs for no purpose other than that's what we do."

When they were signed on curate and perform at the British festival All Tomorrow's Parties they decided to release the EP, which includes the warped-sounding rocker "Fate to Fatal" and a whispery cover of little-known Bob Marley song "Chances Are."

"It's a rather obscure one from his doo-wop phase, really early in his career," Kelley says. "It's not a reggae song, though obviously everything he does has a reggae tinge. But this was doo-wop. That's what the guys did then to get the chicks. We just had that on a mix tape. We would be in our car listening to it. Had it popping around for years and always wanted to do it."

"The Last Time" is fairly unrecognizable as a Breeders track as the lead vocal is sung by Mark Lanegan (of Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age) in his sinister baritone. The Breeders first ran into him when they went to see the Gutters Twins in Dublin, featuring Lanegan and Greg Dulli.

"We went and said hi to him. He's very taciturn, very monosyllabic. But he was nice. Later that fall when we were doing 'The Last Time' Kim really wanted a guy's voice because it would exude more gravitas. She said 'I'd really like to get Mark Lanegan to sing this.' People have asked what was it like working with him. The positives and negatives about ProTools: Mark Lanegan, cool, he's on our song. The negative is, I didn't meet him. He mailed in the file."

The four songs speak to the sonic diversity of the Breeders, who never felt the pressure to write a "Cannonball" for each record.

"Oh no, no," Kelley says. "That's really other people's problem, not my problem. Ha-ha! I'm so glad people like that song. I love playing it. People have asked if I get sick of playing it. It's not like we play 'Cannonball' five times a night so it's not like we play it more than other songs. I don't get sick of playing that song ever. Plus, it's a really good song. Plus, that album has a lot of dark moments, it's got a lot of slow dirges on there. It's interesting that people define the band as 'Cannonball band.' Did they not hear 'Mad Lucas'? The thing is trippy. Is it my problem people define the Breeders by that song?"

At some point, the Breeders will wrap some of that EP into a full-length, but there's a lot to do before that: the tour, a trip to Hawaii for Albini's wedding, a collaboration with the twins in The National for the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a big Pixies tour that will focus on "Doolittle."

"They're fantastic to watch. Awesome to watch," Kelley says of her sister's band. "I think I'm going to go out with Kim in the States for some of the Pixies shows, just to keep her company, 'cause touring with all guys is boring ... 'cause guys are boring. It's so true."

While on the road, Kelley will be sure to stuff the van with her knitting projects. Last October, she released a book of handbag knitting patterns, "Bags That Rock: Knitting on the Road with Kelley Deal," and she also sells her wares on the Web site Wire & Twine.

Is it true that knitting helped her kick her heroin addiction?

"Not directly," she says. "I don't recommend if someone has a drug problem to not take care of it and just go knit. That won't work. But there's a lot of downtime in music. You wait in the airports or you're in the hotel room, or waiting in the lobby, or at the club. It really gives you something to do that's creative, and kind of busy work, puts you in zen mind-set."

First Published: August 20, 2009, 1:30 a.m.