Bastille on 'Bad Blood', "Pompeii", and Ellen Degeneres

I was asked to my own devices. Many days. I'm here with Dan, Woody, Kyle, and Will, and they are best, I want to call them bestie. Can I call you bestie instead of besties?

You probably, you probably shouldn't.

Is the proper pronunciation?

No, no, no. We've, we've horribly bastardized the word.

Is that inappropriate? That's not.

No, you can know, we love it. We love it. Bring on all that. That we, we love that.

But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all? And if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like you've been here before? So congratulations. Just saw you guys on Ellen. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is that, you realize like when you come to America and you come to L. A. , if Ellen embraces you, you're good to go. I mean, you're pretty much, you have like a, a passport at this point. And I wasn't embraced. Wait, who hugged? Who? Did you all hug Ellen?

Well, one at a time. We're not monsters. It wasn't a group hug. Um, she was loved, she was lovely. She was very kind to us and um, she, she held us firm, not too long. I'll give it about a seven out of ten. Barely, barely a ten.

So let's talk about all this bad blood. Let's. Let's. So double disc. Not showing off or anything are you guys? So the first, so the first disc is is songs that you've released in the past or you from the first album?

Between the two, between between all the songs, it's kind of everything we've done up till now and a few things sort of looking forward um, to our next album. Yeah, just it's just feels like it kind of encompasses everything. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you guys, you have a very eclectic sound. And I know people have sort of had a hard time pinpointing like And is that an intentional thing?

Yeah. We don't, we don't care about genre and we won't ever be setting out to ever be anything. So and the importance of like labels and stuff to a lot of people, um, it was frustrating, I think for some people that we weren't a a specific thing. They're like, be, be this or be that. Yeah. Like be an indie band or be a pop act.

But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all? And if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like you've been here before? A song like Pompeii, first of all, 45 million views on YouTube. Do you guys check it on the daily? I'd be checking it every day. I'd be like, how many are we up to now?

I mean, I think we, we don't. But, but no, we, we don't check. But I remember it's it's just really interesting. I think it's, it's you know, like at the beginning, if we got like a 100,000 hits on a song, we'd like lose our shit.

So how do you guys sort of grasp because now it's it's sort of like you guys are sort of that band that everybody talks about on the verge of going to the next level. Is that frightening to you? Is that exciting to you?

It's now. Yeah. He said that. Just so involved in the whole time that we we never get a chance to sort of look at it like that. We we we I think it's really good. I think it's really healthy to just to, just to keep we, we very much flat line, just keep just yeah. And we.

What has been a never moment for you guys that you sort of look at each other and go, how do you know?

Like, the other day, we played a gig in Denver and in an arena, which is nuts. And people were singing our songs. We're like, we're in Denver, Colorado and there are people singing our songs. In San Antonio, in Salt Lake City. really put off because Dan's sister was with us on the side of the stage. Crying. Crying. And I I I on my side. I didn't cry. I didn't cry. I just tried not to laugh. I couldn't. I couldn't. My my my sister's like, um, is is not a sort of like overly emotional person. And um, and she was she, she came with some friends and was standing side of stage and I I'd never, I think for us we kind of, we're sort of starting to get used to playing shows like that. Right. But my sister was like, she was like, she's not emotional, but like we, we finished with this song Flaws and and she was like, oh God, I'm crying. What's going on? She was like, annoyed at herself. Like, oh, what's this? I'm leaking. It's never happened to me.

We know that the rubble of our sins, and the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love. Great crowds rolled over the hills, bringing darkness from above. But if you close your eyes. And last but not least, I know you guys have covered Miley Cyrus, which kind of blew me away. You put these twists, TLC. Mhm. Do you twerk? Can you twerk? Can you?

I can twerk.

Please twerk. Come on. Is this where this is going? Let's just jump to it. If one of you will twerk with me. Why? What? Woody's got an ass beyond belief. He's got, he's got sexy ass. Oh, it's massive. Should we twerk? Woody, twerk. I don't even know how you twerk. Come on, you know how to twerk. Is it, is it like this or is that? Twerk it. What are you? Woody.

I don't, I don't want to twerk. I'm sorry.

He's an evil, he's an evil genius. Thank you, thank you very much. Congratulations on all your success.

Thank you.

I want a voice lesson, how to do that thing in Pompeii.

Which thing?

That little, I don't know, you do that thing that's just like You already got that. Wait, wait, wait. He does what thing? He does a thing with his voice. It's like that African thing, like, I don't know. What song? It's the song. He does it on the chorus really quickly. Exactly. We're going to hang on. We're going to let's we'll do that bit of the chorus. Okay, let's do it. Ready? Ready? Two, three. One, two, three, four.