A quick guide to: La Femme

Get the low-down on the Shanghai-bound French retro pop band

My high school French tells me that means 'the woman'.
Très bien!

So she must be the one in the beret.
Actually it’s a bit complicated. La Femme are a band, not a woman. The band currently includes a woman, but the woman is not the band. In fact the founders of La Femme are two trendy dudes from Biarritz who started playing zany surf-rock, moved to Paris, met Clémence Quélennec online and invited her to sing for the new project.

And how's that going for them?
Very nicely. They’ve sold out MAO Livehouse-sized venues in France, and their second album Mystère just went Top Ten. They’re kind of the grands fromages of the French indie scene.

La Femme

Random European bands tour through Shanghai all the time. Why should I care about this one?
Because both Mystère and its 2013 predecessor, Psycho Tropical Berlin, are la merde. That’s partly because they’re ridiculously eclectic. Quélennec’s songs give traditional French genres like chanson and yéyé unexpected psychedelic twists, while co-vocalist Marlon Magnée busts out lengthy, surreal streams of consciousness about love and loss over screeching ’60s organ lines and bouncy beats. They’re also a storming live band: ever seen someone crowdsurf on an actual surfboard?

Magnifique! Anything else I should know?
Mystère is out now, and the band make the trip from actual Paris to the 'Paris of the East' in March (see details below). If you really hammer DuoLingo till then, you might just be able to follow the lyrics.

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