Natas loves You: Skip Stones

A colourful and international themed video, appropriate for a band originally from Luxembourg, based in
Paris and featuring two French members, one English, one from Finland and one from the US.

The clip was directed by Thibault Dumoulin and shot in India.

Skip Stones is the lead track from the band's new four track EP.

It comes ahead of their debut album The 8th Continent, expected to come out in summer 2014.

It's taken the band, originally formed in 2008 a while to get to the point of releasing their debut, but by the sound of things it will be well worth the wait.

I'm pretty sure we'll be hearing a great deal more by this band in 2014.

Rétro: France Gall - Poupée de cire, poupée de son

With this week's attention on the Eurovision song contest, I thought I'd take a look back to one of France's most memorable moments on Eurovision, with the 1965 win by France Gall.

The song  Poupée de cire, poupée de son was written by Serge Gainsbourg. Needless to say, one of France's greatest singers of the time and greatest songwriters ever. Needless to say, it was for Luxembourg.

It was the first time a song that was not a ballad won Eurovision. It was both a great song in the then-contemporary pop style, which also mocked  the genre at the same time. While a perfect example of yéyé pop, its clever wordplay in the lyrics puts it in  a different league from most of the other releases of that era.

Gall and Gainsbourg had worked before, with songs like N'écoute pas les idoles and Laisse tomber les filles proving to be hits before Poupée de cire, poupée de son won the Eurovision contest in Naples in 1965.

Gall and Gainsbourg would work together on other songs, although they would eventually dissolve their artistic partnership at the end of the 60s.

The song was re-recorded by Gall in a number of languages, as the exposure of Eurovision opened up a market for her outwith France.