After a year of extensive touring, the show goes on for Chicago rockers, French Police. The trio consisting of Brian Flores, Manny Herrera, and Rolando Donjuan. French Police are blossoming in the post-punk dark wave scene. But they’ll have you know that labels and genre are something they frequently shed off. This band is about giving people good shows, good music, and a space to dance to.
There’s a little over two weeks left on this North American Tour in 2026 for French Police; that includes a date opening for Interpol, the main influence for lead vocalist Brian Flores in his musical endeavors.
Touring seems to be the band’s main outlet and time consumer, and what stands out more is how they go about touring. It’s been two years since their last album, Bully, was released and a year since their last EP.
That’s to say, they’re on the road a lot and completely isolate time on the road from recording time. French Police’s defining characteristic seems to be that clearly defined boundary and the duality within them.
They’re calm, cool, and collected. Nonchalant. They have the “we don’t care, we just make our music” ethos of punk. They have the post-punk sound. The dark wave style. But they refuse to check off or even fit into any one of those boxes.
At the same time, they’re not these monumental, from a different realm rockstars. They’re still a band of three kids from Chicago out and seeing the world, singing and talking about what they’re seeing. There’s no pretense. And this translates to their live shows.
With songs like “CDMX”, “Sushi and Sex”, “Illinois”, and “Vergüenza”, they show you their world and it’s the same one we all live in. Their post-punk partiality might make them an ideal listen for spooky season, but like any other fun band their all-year listen.
In an interview done via while they headed their way for the Houston, TX stop on this tour, I spoke to them about the intensive touring, their style of music, and more. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. The full gallery from their El Paso, TX at the Lowbrow Palace on September 30th show is also at the end of the article.
Follow French Police on their Instagram for more updates from the band.
Antonio Villaseñor-Baca: You guys have done a lot of touring, maybe a little bit more than 12 months, including the first overseas tour. Has all of this touring, or extensive touring in this time frame impacted the live show? How are you guys feeling. Like, not just with this immediate tour, but all the touring you’ve been doing over the last year. How is that making you all feel? How is that going, on a larger interval?
Brian Flores: It does make it hard sometimes when there’s back to back tours because there’s, a lot of preparations that you have to do for each tour. So, it kind of makes it hard to get together always and learn new songs or older songs you’ve never played or, you know, get stuff together. But, I mean, we’re usually pretty prepared, to go on tour so it doesn’t feel too crazy.
Manny Herrera: I feel like as every tour that we do, we kind of get more used to the routine. We kind of, like, build a routine for ourselves. And it gets a little easier compared to the first time around.
Rolando Donjuan: I feel like, when it comes to touring so frequently one thing that does become a little bit of a challenge is figuring out how do I keep the setlist fresh in terms of making sure that we’re not always playing like the same songs and stuff like that.
I think this time around what’s benefiting us a lot is like having the live drum addition to the sound aspect for the live show. So that’s been pretty interesting to see this tour, like how the fans have been reacting to that, and I think they’ve been taking it very well. So it’s been a lot of fun for us as well.
I have to imagine that in the middle of touring so much, it’s at least a little bit of tiredness or exhaustion from it. But again, it’s also a lot of precision and practice that must come along with that as well. In, in the middle of these dates, in all this road time and travel, is there space for you guys to relax and work on new music, or has it been kind of separated and you guys intentionally wanting to do all this time traveling too?
Brian: Yeah. There’s not really much time to record over. We don’t like to write. I don’t like to mix that with touring. I think for me, it’s better when I write at home. And then touring is touring, you know? We get time too. We get some days off sometimes, but we usually don’t really like to have too many days off because we like to just power through the whole thing.
It seems like [your music, like dark wave/post-punk] tends to be put into a niche and it’s associated with a time setting, a culture, a wardrobe, so to speak. Do you think you getting here into the fall that that also leads a little bit to more energy in the crowds? Or is that something that you haven’t experienced?
Brian: Well, personally, I don’t like to put us into the category of the whole goth/darkwave thing. I mean, I’m glad we’re accepted into it, but, you know, we’re just a band. I would consider us just alternative. But, yeah, I guess, because we dress in black and because the music’s a little darker during, like, the fall time, you know, people definitely like to stream the music and go to the shows, you know?
It doesn’t seem like you’re too preoccupied with finding an exact label for it, but when it comes to actually mixing the live performance and the way that you record and the way that you go about making music, do you take directly from influences or do you guys kind of just start with whatever feels right and sounds right?
Brian: Yeah. I mean, we usually just go with the flow. Like, whatever we feel, we don’t want to really put on too much of an act. I mean, we’re not those kind of guys. So we try to be just as much of ourselves as we can be in the studio and on stage. We’re not trying to be gimmicky or anything, you know?
Rolando: That’s definitely something that’s super important for us, is just trying to be as authentic to ourselves as we can. Not really chasing trends or anything like that.
Right on. What does that authenticity mean for you all? What is, I guess I always feel like the question sounds a little bit cliché, but what is the purpose behind the music? Obviously sometimes it is just to make the music. Sometimes it’s for a message to resonate with the audience. Does that change song by song, album by album. Performance by performance. What is French police’s mantra or aim with their music and live shows?
Brian: I mean, I hate to say, but it’s not really anything too serious. I mean, we’re just a couple guys who we like to play music. We enjoy playing live, and we’re just trying to have fun. And if people can connect to it, that’s great. We’re not we’re not too serious about the message, per se. A lot of the songs are written subliminally and, you know, personally where I don’t really expect people to understand what the true meanings of the songs are. But whatever their interpretation is, that’s cool by me. You know, that’s kind of what I want, everybody to interpret in their own way.
Rolando: I don’t really got anything else to add to that, really. I think Brian kind of hit the nail on the head with this. Kind of like how we interpret ourselves, like, as a band.
Matt: I agree with what they’re both saying. Just, you know, trying to keep it genuine, not following trends. And, just being true to ourselves and playing live music. That’s really what we enjoy the most.
That’s super cool. It’s interesting, I feel, and I’ll have, maybe annoying, but more, specific question in a moment here about, what that reception has been like and what that has made you guys feel. It seems like in today’s day and age, there needs to be a political affiliation. Or even if it’s not necessarily like a blue or red political statement, it seems like a lot of people project onto the media that they’re consuming, “oh. This means this.” Or, this resonates with these people for this reason. Have you guys had that experience where they try to assign some sort of affiliation with y’all? Like they’re thrusting the dark wave post-punk labels. Maybe because of, you know, you all wear all black and things like that. Has an example like that ever come up?
Brian: I mean, we don’t really look too much into that stuff. We’re just a band. We just make music. If people are saying stuff, we don’t really pay much attention to it. It’s not really that important to us. I don’t know how to word that without sounding weird, but you get what I’m saying, though. We’re more focused on the band making the music, giving good shows to whoever, whoever wants to go. Doesn’t matter what you are, what you like, regardless if you’re political, if you’re not, it doesn’t matter. We just want to play music for people.
And right now, with these tour dates, are y’all getting to new audiences? Have you been able to visit any new places?
Brian: Yeah. I mean, I feel like every time we tour, we have new people in the crowd. Not necessarily people who are even into the music. Every year there’s been people who are brand new. Yeah, ‘I fuck with your guys’ music. I never even listen to the genre or anything like that.’
I still see a lot of, a lot of framework articles that are very much poised around you guys being a band from Chicago, which is a very large city, a lot of large acts. But you guys are definitely not a small indie band. Do you guys ever think about that? Do you still see yourselves as a Chicago band or has French Police now morphed into something that’s outside of the city and reaches maybe different crowds, so to speak?
Biran: We’ll always be a Chicago band. We’re proud to be from Chicago but we’ve gone to a lot of places over the years, so, I mean, everywhere we go, we see that there. We do have like some sort of fan base, whether it’s like 100 people at a show or a thousand, I guess you could say we’re for everybody.
Right on. Chicos? Manny, Ronaldo? Same thing, same sentiment?
Manny: Yeah, pretty much the same. I think that that’s always going to be something that we’re very proud of is being a band from Chicago. You know? I mean, we just really love our city. We’re always going to Chicago. But where we’re at now and how often we’re touring, it does feel to a point where it’s starting to become a little bit bigger than just Chicago. We’re starting to find other cities that are home away from home, L.A., Ciudad de México. Yeah. Those are two of the other cities that I feel like we kind of feels like a second home to us.
By Antonio Villaseñor-Baca