With a name that means “new wave” in English and in Portuguese “bossa nova”, the picture of their musical vision is already painted. In 2003 this french musical collective led by members Marc Collin und Olivier Libaux recruited french and brasilian singers and they began to explore new wave and punk classics in a bossa nova style. This unique musical venture proved to be successful, their debut album “Nouvelle Vague” was released (on Peacefrog) in Europe in 2004 and received U.S. distribution in spring 2005, more than 200,000 copies were sold. This led to tour dates in over twenty countries, they visited locations as out of the way from their native France as Shanghai, New York, Los Angeles, and Rio de Janeiro.

Nouvelle Vague’s second album, “Bande à Part”, was released in summer 2006 (on Peacefrog). With this album Nouvelle vague kept to the original concept of re-arranging the greatest, but rarely covered early ‘80s post-punk songs in an original way. It included versions of “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)” by Buzzcocks, “Blue Monday” by New Order, “The Killing Moon” by Echo and the Bunnymen and “Heart of Glass” by Blondie.

The producers of Nouvelle Vague below explain other underlying sources of inspiration of “Bande à Part.”

“I then had the idea to set these songs in a very different dimension, namely the Caribbean between 1940 and 1970. Just as on the first album I’d imagined a young Brazilian girl singing Love Will Tear Us Apart on a Rio beach in the ‘60s, this time I envisaged a young Jamaican with his acoustic guitar singing Heart Of Glass in his Kingston township suburb”.

“At the same time, I also had another particular scene in my mind: a young blind girl singing Fade To Grey in the corridors of the Parisian Metro, alone with her accordion, ignored by everyone…”

“Together these two ideas were the genesis for the new album. Musically I saw it moving between Jamaica, the cradle of mento music which became ska/rocksteady then reggae, to the calypso isle of Trinidad via Cuban salsa, Haitian voodoo, and eventually back to our beloved Brazilian coast.”

The result? “The arrangements and orchestrations are all very colourful: a lot of percussion and acoustic guitars topped off with sensual, feminine voices, accordions, steel drums and more….”

In 2007 Nouvelle Vague returned to the scene with “Coming Home” (released on Azuli), a collection of songs from films given the Nouvelle Vague makeover. “New Wave”, a collection of covers by new wave artists, also arrived in 2007. They also mixed the 17th compilation of “Late Night Tales” released on Azuli.

We now eagerly await to see what next will get the Nouvelle Vague makeover.