After a year that brought TV exposure and a lot of musical exploration, the much-admired alternative band Alexis & the Samurai are working on an ambitious new album. That disc won’t be released until later in the summer, but you can get a preview at the duo’s Monday night residency through June at Chickie Wah Wah.

Alexis & the Samurai are officially an acoustic duo employing strings, guitar, vocal harmony and foot-stomp percussion. But at Jazz Fest they shook things up by adding extra singers and players, including singer Cody Belew, who like Alexis Marceaux was a contestant on NBC-TV’s The Voice last fall. Marceaux and Belew dueted on Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” More guests are expected on the forthcoming disc, a followup to Marceuax’s 2011 Orange Moon that employed two dozen guest players.  “Our sound is evolving, we’re getting less afraid to be weird and eclectic in the studio. We want to push the envelope to make music that will be genre-defying so that we can keep showing the world how diverse New Orleans music really is,” Marceaux said in a recent press release.

Singer/songwriter Marceaux and multi-instrumentalist partner Sam Craft have worked together in various incarnations, including the rock band Glasgow and the modern Cajun group Sweet Crude (who will be profiled in next month’s OffBeat); they’re also a longtime couple. “One of us can come in with a mediocre idea, and the other person will turn it into a decent idea, and then the first person takes that idea back and then makes it a good idea,” Craft told OffBeat last year.  Along with her Voice appearance, Marceaux has placed songs on a few TV shows including one we somehow missed, the E! channel’s  “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

You can keep up with Alexis & the Samurai every Monday of this month at Chickie Wah Wah (2828 Canal Street, 504.304.4714). Shows begin at 8 p.m.