Latitude 2015 Warpaint: “Latitude looks like a beautiful festival”

”We learned a lot from what happened last time; people kept making us offers, so we kept extending the tour, and it wasn’t really a good idea.”

Ahead of their biggest UK tour to date back in March, Warpaint announced a fairly radical break with convention; there were no firm plans on the horizon for a third record, with the decision instead being made to release new songs as and when they were ready. “It feels like a more natural way to approach things,” says drummer Stella Mozgawa. “Everything’s winding up on the touring front now. You need to take a few months to actually live your life after being on the road for so long, and make sure that you only come back once you’ve got something important to say, and to write about. We’ve never been the sort of band that prides itself on being prolific - we’d rather just put out music that we’re proud of. We’re just taking things as they come now; that’s where our head’s at.”

The excellent double A-side of ‘No Way Out’ and ‘I’ll Start Believing’ provided a statement of intent right around the time they headlined Hammersmith Apollo earlier this year, and Stella is confident that the new approach is one that will prove workable in the long term. “We’ve been lucky enough never to have been under too much pressure from anybody,” she explains. “We’re not a massive band, we’re not a poppy band, and it makes sense for everybody involved for us to take our time and do things the way we see fit. As soon as you feel like you’re being forced into a certain way of working, it ends up breeding resentment. It’s never going to be healthy creatively.”

There’s still a handful of summer shows on the horizon, though; on top of shows in Toronto and Latvia, Warpaint make what is - incredibly - their Latitude debut. “I don’t think we’ve ever played it before, but maybe I was just emotionally unconscious for it!” laughs Stella, “Like I said, by the end of the first album cycle it got to the point where we were kind of flogging a dead horse a bit, and in that situation you start to lose track of where you are a little bit. It looks like a beautiful festival, though, and I know there’s a few of our friends playing that day. I’m not sure how long we’re going to be able to stick around for; hopefully, we can sort ourselves out time zone-wise, get out there and see some of the wonderful things that are going to be on offer.”

Warpaint will play Latitude (16th - 19th July), where DIY is an official media partner. Tickets are on sale now. Visit diymag.com/presents for more information.