Can Fontaines DC make rock bands cool again?

It's the humid hustle and bustle of mid-August, a week before the release of Fontaines' fourth album. Romance, and I came to meet the band in Charleville-Mézières, a small town located between the French Champagne region and the Belgian border. They're in town for Le Cabaret Vert, a festival where they first performed in 2018; Three performances here and as many albums later, they are now at the top of the list.

This special performance comes amid a seismic wave that has taken the band from cult status – they're your favorite artist's favorite artist – to the cusp of something much bigger. After a slow rise (a Grammy nomination in 2021, a BRIT Award in 2023), Fontaines are everywhere: in Andrea Arnold's film Birdwhich was released this month and features Barry Keoghan menacingly singing their track “A Hero's Death”; To Jimmy Fallon, Release of “Starburster,” the album’s first single; at the cover shoot for this issue, where Paul Mescal said that Fontaines was all he was listening to. (“They get into your brain and never really leave,” Mescal said GQ.)

It feels like success peaks at this very moment, as they arrive scattered on the riverbank in Charleville-Mézières, dressed in a chaos of leopard print, neon sunglasses and Adidas tracksuits. First Coll and guitarist Carlos O'Connell, then Chatten, bassist Conor Deegan III (“Deego”, always) and Curley bringing up the rear.

Fontaines' rise is all the more unlikely given that it comes at a time when the all-male guitar band seems like an endangered species. So far this year, not a single band has made it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. In our time of outsized pop personalities, serious country boys and culture-guzzling rap cattle, indie rock bands feel like relics from another decade. The few that have found relevance have done so by attempting to break the mold of their predecessors (Boygenius) or through their ironic, parodic approach (1975). Fontaines have established themselves as something completely different: an angry punk rock band that takes aim at the ills of society with Chatten's growling, screaming vocals, harsh guitar chords and the thunderclap of Coll's driving drums.

Even when Fontaines finally gets her flowers, they are already in the middle of another rebellion. For the new album, Romance, The band went to war with their self-image, promoting a new, gentler sound that hurts with its frustrations and pain rather than screaming it in your face. At the same time, the band underwent a radical makeover, abandoning their previous favorite cardigans, jeans and leather jackets in favor of outfits with skirts and knee socks and straight hair in the style of Natural born killers.