The Kooks: "You want to stay like Peter Pan, keep young in your mind"

The Kooks are one of the most enduring British bands this side of the millennium. Nearly fifteen years on from their formation, and you can still hear their biggest hits belted out in indie discos all over the country. If you don’t know most of the words to at least one of their unavoidable bangers, well, you’re probably not going to be sat there reading Dork. Riding on the back of their latest record ‘Let’s Go Sunshine’ - “the best album we've done,” according to frontman Luke Pritchard - the band are currently making their way through festivals, and have just been confirmed for next year’s Community.

Hello Luke. How’s summer been for The Kooks? It's been a lot of festivals. I think our band works particularly well at festivals; it’s where we're most comfortable. We've been having a good one. The new songs have been going down well.

Last year you did this massive greatest hits tour, but things seem to have kept growing since then. I hope so. I feel like we've still got a lot to say. I really feel like our new album is maybe the best album we've done, I know it's probably what a lot of people say, but you've got to believe that. We've come up with something exciting. It should engage people in a different way to they've been engaged before. We're not a band who does the same album twice. We're bringing something new so let's see how it pans out. We're humble. We're a humble British band that's doing okay.

You’ve been in this game for a while now. Are you still taking to time to appreciate things, or has it become par for the course? I’m appreciative of everything in my life, but we work hard. We've been through ups and downs as a band, and right now, we’re having an upward moment. I learnt from the first album; you've got to enjoy that moment at the time because soon you're going to be on the down again and you're not going to remember having a good time. We are definitely pretty real, in terms of our experience. We had an explosion on our first album but for us, this is an artistic endeavour, and it’s fun, and it has its ups and downs. At the moment, I'm happy, but I’m asking, what are we doing next?