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The sound of French-duo Kids Return is a warm, analog feeling of bittersweet nostalgia. The band describes themselves as, “First and foremost a great story of friendship between Adrien Rozé and Clément Savoye.” Rozé and Savoye’s music explores the false naivety of childhood, and evokes feelings of nostalgia by creating “the soundtrack to their lives”. The duo recently released their debut album, “Forever Melodies”, and collaborated with French luxury fashion house Yves Saint Laurent as part of the Saint Laurent Rive Droite live session series. 

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‍Your debut album Forever Melodies is a dreamy, psychedelic ensemble of easy going tracks, what was the main inspiration behind it?‍

We are very inspired by the cinema, Sergio Leone's for the atmosphere, the great spaces, the silence and the heat or Takeshi Kitano's, for the modesty of the characters, the way he treats childhood or adolescence (in the movie Kids Return for example). We also like a lot the psychedelic music of the 70's like Pink Floyd, but also the French bands of the 2000's like Air. 

The album’s leading track "Melody" was the first single you released into the world–can you describe how it felt to finally get your music out there?

 It's one of the best feelings possible, a kind of ultimate satisfaction. It's exciting to see how people react. It was like a birth. 

Can you put into words the process of crafting your sound as a band?‍

At the beginning our goal was to make music for movies, but we got caught up by the desire to make pop songs, to sing, to have choruses and to play on stage. We love soundtracks but we also love rock and pop bands, many of them are our models. What makes us a band is first of all the energy that we put together, we couldn't do it without each other. Then it's about the arrangement, even if there are strings, flutes etc, there is each time the trio bass/drum/guitar, which is the essence of a rock band. 

Can you walk us through the writing process for Forever Melodies?

The idea of making an album came with the idea of wanting to make a band. We didn't want to do an EP. The 10 songs that are in the album are the 10 songs that we had. Some bands do 20 songs and only keep 10, we did 10 songs and kept them all. We composed a part of our album in Paris, and a part in the Pyrenees, in a house perched on top of the mountains. To write we like to be surrounded by big spaces, woods and windows, to have a view. 

What drives the both of you? Both in life and in music?

It's this desire to express ourselves, to propose to people our vision of the world, of the reality, through a sort of positive melancholy that soothes and gives hope. Music is for us the way to express that. What also motivates us is that we take a lot of pleasure to do it, we like to meet in the morning at the studio or to go on tour together. We are friends since we are 13 years old, so we live a kind of child dream. 

How has tour been treating you so far? Any traditions or routines you’ve picked up along the way?

We love being on tour. We laugh a lot, we have fun but we still keep a rigor. We like to visit the cities where we are, to meet people… but we don't really have a ritual before the concerts. We warm up our voices and give each other a big hug, it's the least we can do! 

Do you have any dream venues you wish to play in the future?

We have plenty of venues where we would like to play We already played at Red Rocks in Colorado, it was great. Playing in Madison Square would be great, at the Apollo Theater in New York too. But the ultimate dream would be to play in Japan!