Over the course of their last two albums, London duo Big Deal have been perfecting their distinctive sound – gorgeous, effortlessly infectious melodies and sun dappled hooks wrapping around the bruised vocals and broken hearted lyricism of Alice Costelloe and KC Underwood. Despite hailing from London, their sun-drenched sound points the way towards SoCal harmonies and their video for In Your Car depicts a Cali road trip at it’s best. The single ‘Always Boys’ sees the band deliver their biggest and boldest pop song to date, complete with a nonchalant chorus that sees Costelloe bemoaning her attraction to guitar playing guys, with the video released today, we caught up with Alice to talk touring with Depeche Mode and the making of In Your Car…

 So how did you two meet?

It’s pretty boring! We just both playing in bands in London and then became friends when our relative bands imploded.

I see. What did you grow up on then, musically that is?

Lots of English guitar bands. Classics like the smiths, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin. And then later on it was all about American rock like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Junior, The lemonheads. Me and KC have pretty similar music taste but their are a couple of bands he loves that I can’t stand. Afghan Wigs for example – I do not get at all!

I guess you can’t agree on everything. Had you always wanted to be a musician?

No! I’ve never known what I want to be. I still don’t. I’m always amazed by people who know exactly what they want. I tend to just fall in and out of things.

Life can be pretty daunting! Where do you look for inspiration when writing your songs?

I’ve never really thought about it. I just write when a melody comes into my head or an idea, or a phrase that someone says sticks in my head. Before writing June Gloom, me and KC both lost family members and that definitely affected some of the songs on the album. It made our writing much less introverted because we started to think about life and death and the universe!

What about In Your Car, talk me through it…

We wrote it whilst driving round California. It’s the kind of song we would never been able to write from our dingy bedrooms in London.

Totally. The video concept is great, where did that idea come from?

We really love the director Danny Perez, we’d seen his videos for Animal Collective and really wanted to work with him. And it just so happened we were in LA and he wanted to make it happen too! We told him we had this idea of making a video that was kind of like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But we also kept seeing these kind of scary psychedelic dancing bears being in the video. Every other director we’d approached had wanted to ignore the dancing bear idea but when we told Danny he wrote us back immediately with a design for the bears costumes he’d drawn which was even better than we’d imagined.

Well the result is incredible! You’ve recently supported Depeche Mode, how was that?

Amazing. They put on a great show every night. We’d been warned that their fans were very protective and might be hard to play for, but actually they were great and made us feel very welcome.

So what were your favourite places in Europe?

Hamburg and Munich. The crowds were so great. They made us come back onstage…twice. The people of Switzerland were so friendly as well. And we got to see an amazing castle there called Chillon.

What about your fans, have you had any crazy hardcore fan experiences?

Not really. The fans that we meet are always really sweet and interesting and not at all crazy. Recently I got sent a poetry book in the mail though with no note or address of sender, that freaked me out a little bit, but still a pretty nice gesture.

That’s kind of sweet! Which other artists are currently influencing you?

We played a show with our old friends Grouplove a couple of weeks ago and they are so amazing live. It was really inspiring to see them doing so well. They’ve worked so hard and are such a great band, seeing them succeed is definitely a positive influence. And I don know if they’re necessarily influencing us musically because we have such different sounds. But our new favourite band are Crushed Beaks. They make rock music with super pretty melodies.

Where else can we see you this summer aside from Camden Crawl?

Secret Garden Party, Boardmasters, Truck Festival and Nozstock.

Amazing – we wish you the best of luck.

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Big Deal’s sophomore album might be called June Gloom, but it’s far from a wash-out record: we can confidently report that their follow-up to 2011’s Lights Out is an altogether grander affair (hello, rhythm section) that loses none of the spacey charm of their boy-girl dynamic.

But don’t take our word for it: check out this video from Kacy Underwood and Alice Costelloe. The transatlantic duo – Kacy is from America, Alice is English – talk about the inspiration behind the tracks (dinosaurs – no, really) and swap stories about the making of the album. For the record, we think Kacy’s English accent is on point.

June Gloom is released today via Mute. www.wearebigdeal.com

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