Bastille are the band on everyone’s lips right now, with a summer full of festival shows, an upcoming world tour and that’s all without mentioning their second album going straight in at number one, it’s no wonder everyone’s talking about them.

'Wild World' has been a long time coming (three and a half years to be precise) and since the release of their platinum selling debut album 'Bad Blood', fans have been counting down the days. Although it may seem like a long time, the band hasn’t actually had a lot of time off. Since the release, and the subsequent whirlwind, of their debut album the London four piece have been constantly on tour, all the while drip-feeding fans snippets of brand new tracks.

Speaking to us backstage at this year’s Bestival, the band’s founder, Dan Smith, gave us an insight into how the new record has affected their live shows, he said: “The thing we tried to get right over the summer is to play enough of the new album so it feels like we’re not still just playing the first record, but also leave enough significant songs as brand new so anyone who likes our music, and has been following what we play live, will have a significant chunk of new music that’s a complete surprise.”

‘A significant chunk’ is a pretty accurate way of describing the goliath that is 'Wild World'. In Dan’s words, ‘the album that we’ve released, the one we see as the proper version, is 19 tracks long’.These days’ artists rarely reach just over ten tracks on an album. However, releasing this much music isn’t new to Bastille, their fans are used to their generosity when it comes to the volume of music they release, as Dan explained: “We always put out a lot of music so I feel like for us, it’s quite cathartic to suddenly have all of this stuff we’ve been pouring over for a couple of years all out in one go.”

Bastille fans are known for their dedication; however, one thing that annoys both Dan and Kyle is how the media have typecast their fan-base. Dan told us: “It’s unavoidable to be aware of how some people see you and I think we definitely became that band that a lot of people in the media decided it was just fan-girls that liked us. When that’s used in a pejorative way, it’s hugely insulting to fans.”

“It’s also hugely incorrect” Kyle (Simmons, the band’s keyboard/synth/backing vocal extraordinaire) added, clearly riled up by this topic. It’s obviousto those who care that Bastille’s fan-base is so varied, Dan chatted a bit about this, saying: “We obviously know more than anyone else because we’re the ones that meet people that like our music. I’m always so blown away by the mad cross section of society who are into our stuff. We try and make music that’s really honest, fun and that means something to us and engages with so much stuff.”

He added: “We don’t patronise, I’ve said it before, because we love doing this so much we but loads of effort into everything from 'Wild World Comms', fromour videos to the artwork, every little page of the album and every note of the music,and for anyone who cares enough to want to look into that, we give a lot back.”

And that’s obvious, the' Wild World' campaign has been one of the most creative album promotions of recent years, but where did the concept come from? Dan told us: “It’s fun to create this world in which the album exists. In the songs they look at the news and what happens in the world, we were just trying to think of creative and interesting ways to announce things. We’ve been doing pop-ups but we wanted to make it an experience, and I think people really appreciated it because it was, at it’s most pretentious, an installation and an opportunity to experience a little bit of the album.”

He continued: “We obviously love making music and that’s the important part but having the chance to do all of the other stuff, I’d much rather try and be creative with it. It was a nice way to introduce it and allow there to be another voice in the situation that’s not just us saying ‘we have an album coming out’.”

At the time of sitting down with Dan and Kyle, their new album 'Wild World' had only been out for two days and they were about to head onstage to play their first live show since the release. When asked about the initial reaction to the record, the guys were a bit sceptical about the opinions they 'actually' see. Kyle said: “It’s been really nice, although the only people who would bother to contact us would be people that liked it, so we get a bit of a warped perception.”

He went on to describe Dan’s behaviour in the lead up to the release, saying: “There was such an exact point where Dan became way calmer.” And this feeling of relief is one that the band and fans alike have experienced, Dan explained: “The feedback from our fans has been one of excitement and relief. The first album ended up meaning quite a lot to some people, it can be quite hard follow that up.”

The frontman added: “I hadn’t thought about it that much until it came out, and then suddenly all these people are saying, ‘we were so worried because it sounds so different and we thought we wouldn’t like it’. All the things we’ve tried to say with the album, all the things we wanted to do with the sound, we were worried that people wouldn’t come along with where we wanted to go, but it feels like they have.”

Obivously talking about their own music is what they're hereto do, but it’s no secret that Dan is a big advocate for other people’s music, he even has, ‘probably talking about films & other people's music’ in his Twitter bio. So when we asked what he thinks of the highly anticipated Frank Ocean album, his eyes lit up as he said: “I think the Frank Ocean album is brilliant. What’s really beautiful about it is how introspective it is. Actually I just listened back to 'Channel Orange' today and it was amazing because it was like a book of short stories, and because of the huge anticipation 'Blonde' is a blockbuster album. People were expecting a huge pop record and actually, like with a lot of big artists at the moment, he’s gone the other way.”

In terms of their own music, Bastille have developed their sound significantly since first album, Dan explained: “Sonically and instrumentally we’ve tried a lot of different things. We wanted to have it sit somewhere between our first album and our mix tapes, and for it to run like a soundtrack. There are really intimate moments but rather than doing what we did last time, it’s like a Nancy Sinatra, Tarentino-esque small intimate moment in the middle. We also love hip-hop so when it comes to gesturing towards hip-hop production, we thought, let’s just DO hip-hop production."

All of this comes down to how they've developed as a band, but underneath it all, each and every song still has their signature style, as Dan put it: "When it’s us doing it, it will still be Bastille.”