It really feels like only yesterday when the intelligent lyrics of his first album, Memories and Dust, were hogging the airwaves and introducing the world to a young songwriter wise beyond his years.

Now after months of teasing fans with snippets of new material, Josh Pyke (as prolific as ever) has announced that his new album, But For All These Shrinking Hearts, will be released in late July. It is an album somewhat centred on Pkye's relationship with creativity.

"I noticed when listening back at the songs on the album that I could easily translate those songs as being about my relationship with creativity and the struggle and peaks and troughs that you inevitably have with that kind of relationship," Pyke says.

"But also realising that my creative output is never going to stop and is constantly evolving – I did fear it ending yet it never really has, and I kind of have to rely on faith that it is never going to, which is scary because it is a line in the sand that you constantly need to jump over."

The imagery on the cover of Pyke's new album is linked to a true story about a 19th century American inventor, Charles Redheffer, who the singer-songwriter accidently came across while goggling for tattoo ideas. This American inventor claimed the unthinkable: the world's first perpetual motion machine, a machine which moved endlessly, to an infinite end – free of energy source or loss.

Redheffer believed his own myth until a sceptic discovered it was all a farce when he found an old man hidden in a room cranking a wheel to the machine. What interests Pyke about this story is how it can be interpreted as relating to the notion of creativity.

"Basically I do think there are more songs in me than I will ever have time to write," Pyke says. "It is what I came to realise about the idea of the perpetual motion machine is that this machine cannot exist because science and nature prevent it from working and various laws like friction and stuff.

"However the creative world is perpetually in motion and I feel my output never has to end, but I do feel that there have been times where I just don't feel inspired – it is why I relate a lot of the romantic songs to being about my relationship with creativity because if you have a long relationship with a person, romantically or otherwise, there are times when you are mad in love and times when you are just getting through life."

With such deep thinking and Pyke's ability to find meaning in life, it's little wonder he is such an interesting songwriter. With multiple ARIAs, APRAs, gold records, and four top 10 debuts, this fifth album focuses on an artist with a creative spirit and untamed imagination. Pyke still, however, feels pressure to succeed as a musician.

"Sometimes you don't have the head-space of engaging in a creative pursuit and I feel pressure about that 'cause this is my job now. Yet I have made a massive effort over the years to never let that pressure affect my creative output because what I have realised, having done this for 10 years, is that you can't control if a song is going to be played on the radio and you can't control if your record is going to sell and the only thing you can control is being super proud and feeling there is an integrity in your creative output.

"If you can stand by that then at least whatever else happens, whether it is successful or not, you know that you've put your heart and soul into something that you consider has integrity."

Josh Pyke's new album But For All These Shrinking Hearts is available on July 31.