With The Wants' debut album Container set for release in just a few weeks’ time, the band are sharing the album title track. Where previous single ‘Fear My Society’ cut a foreboding shape, and recent single ‘The Motor’ stood out for its revved-up, uneasy guitar and bass riffs, ‘Container’ is the band at their most complete. Guitarist and vocalist Madison Velding-VanDam's dead-pan delivery chimes perfectly with his skewed guitar and electronic underbelly.

He explains: “The lyrics and melody for ‘Container’, which would become the title track of our debut record, came about from a writing exercise I try often: alone in my room, I ramble into my sm7b with my mattress upturned, leaning against the wall to dull excess reverberations, forcing myself to record whatever lyrical threads and tunes come out. Usually I take maybe just one phrase that sticks out — or more often nothing, since I do this just to get ideas flowing — and use that to develop a classic rhyming pattern. But for ‘Container’, the lyrical stream-of-consciousness stuck: full of non-sequiturs, mildly sadistic stanzas that satirize the mundanity of domestic and work life, comically  absurdist quips, gender plays that fold and flip, all of which felt like perfect encapsulations for the themes of our record.”

Container was recorded and produced by Madison Velding-VanDam and Jason Gates at HANJIN, their shipping container converted to studio in a Chinese factory parking lot, as well as respective home studios. The Wants slowly drafted the record over three years, starting with their more post-punk ideas and slowly mutating to include their more adventurous interests in techno, experimental electronic, and ambient music. The process was one of constantly re-imagining a tracks’ potential, generally leaving the melody and lyrics — or the core song as it could be played on an acoustic guitar — intact, weaving new ideas in and around the initial structures. Entire songs and versions would be scrapped after realising that they didn’t fit the overall palette and album vision, which became clearer and clearer. That the album’s polished sound was captured in the band member’s respective bedrooms and rehearsal space is a testament to their attention to detail: Velding-VanDam is a seasoned bedroom pop auteur, and Gates has a wealth of studio experience (Debbie Harry, Angelo Badalamenti, Lykke Li, My Morning Jacket). They recruited pop and hip-hop engineer Jeremy Cimino (J. Cole, Pharrell) for his ability to give their rock instrumentation a fuller sound that explicitly differentiates it from the ubiquity of more genre-abiding contemporary indie recordings.

Feb 26 - Bristol, The Lanes

Feb 27 - London, The Lexington

Feb 28 - Manchester, YES (Basement)

Feb 29 - Glasgow, The Poetry Club

Mar 1 - Leeds, Brudenell Social Club

Mar 2 - Birmingham, The Sunflower Lounge

Mar 3 - London, Village Underground (supporting Dry Cleaning)

Mar 4 - Brighton, The Hope & Ruin

Dadju is France’s new mega-hit afro-RnB star poised to breakthrough in the UK in our new polyglot pop world. If anything makes the argument for his appeal in the English-speaking world it’s his new single ‘Donne moi l’accord’ featuring Nigerian superstar Burna Boy.

Dadju has had over a billion streams on his Youtube and his new tour includes at a date at the stadium home of football team PSG, Parc Des Princes, which holds 47,000 people. He’s the biggest new star in France of the last two years, with three diamond singles, two platinum singles and over a million albums sold.

Born in Bobigny, Seine-Saint-Denis in 1991, Dadju Djuna Nsungula comes from a supremely musical Congolese family. His brother Maître Gims is one of France’s most famous rappers. For fans of Congolese rumba, soukous and ndombolo, his father might be more familiar; Djanana Djuna, a vocalist in Papa Wemba’s band. Dadju’s solo artist breakthrough came in 2017 when his album Gentleman 2.0 got to no.1 on French iTunes.

In November 2019, he released his second project, a 28-track double album called Poison Ou Antidote. Single ‘Donne-moi l’accord’ is taken from that record and produced by leading afrobeats producer of the moment Kel P, who has crafted hits for WizKid and Burna Boy including several for Burna’s last record African Giant.

Dadju Is live in London on Thursday April 16 at the Troxy