Florida's Black Kids may be releasing their debut album on Monday, but they are already considering their demise.

"A band should have a lifespan of ten years," says drummer Kevin Snow.

"It usually tends to go sour after that, if not before. Then again we may call it quits after one or two albums. One thing is for certain, we don't want to drag this out for too long. I think we are always disappointed in bands that do."

The band has certainly fitted a lot into the first two years of its existence.

Kevin, bassist Owen Holmes and frontman Reggie Youngblood had been playing together in bands for the past ten years.

"It's funny," says Kevin on the phone from Paris, where the band is playing its first European date outside the UK. "Each one of those bands we felt would be the one that would succeed. That each one had the winning formula. Instead, each one failed miserably.

"Black Kids felt like a last-ditch effort. If this one failed we would probably give up."

Where Black Kids was different was this time the core trio brought in some girls: Reggie's sister Ali and fellow keyboard player Dawn Watley.

"It definitely brought in a different dynamic," says Kevin.

Their name, which has already courted some controversy, was suggested during a series of band discussions as they were starting out.

"It stuck out," says Kevin. "We thought it could be great, we knew we would be asked about it a lot, and it could become a pain in the ass, but it kept popping up in the next few days.

"We thought it was a bit subversive, like The Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks. It does have that little edge to it."

Initially the band stayed in their native Florida, playing two or three times a month as a support to whatever big act came into their hometown of Jacksonville.

But things changed when they played the Athens Popfest in Georgia last August.

"It's called a festival but it is on a much smaller scale," says Kevin. "We were out of our comfort zone, playing up north in Georgia, in the middle of the day in front of 40 people.

"It was the first time we had given out any of our music, we had just finished our demo CD (the free download Wizard Of Ahhhs EP) and we were handing it out. I guess the right people were in the audience."

All of a sudden there was a buzz on the internet, as bloggers started talking about the band in glowing terms and their MySpace site started receiving regular visits.

Even the likes of the New York Times and USA Today tipped them, despite the fact they didn't even have a record deal. And at the end of the year Rolling Stone and the BBC were among those naming the band as one to watch in 2008.

The hype started getting so intense that it began having a negative effect, with US-based music website Idolater posting a piece headed up The Black Kids Hype Must Be Stopped.

Now, with their debut album Partie Traumatic set for release on Monday, featuring the singles I'm Not Going To Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You and Hurricane Jane, it is finally time for the band to show it's true colours.

"We definitely have hopes that once the album is released a lot of focus is taken off the "hype" and they will write more about the songs," says Kevin. "It's really why we are here." He's hoping it will also have a positive impact on their live shows, with fans knowing more than the same four songs.

The band has come up with a sound best described as Robert Smith of The Cure singing over a bouncy disco beat.

"We set out to be a bit of a party band," says Kevin. "In the way Blondie and the B-52s weren't afraid to tackle any genre, we wanted to have the same freedom."

For now the band's focus is on a mammoth touring and festival schedule.

"If we had to sit down and look at a tour schedule for this time of year we would freak out at having played that many shows in that short a period of time," says Kevin.

"Prior to this we had just been playing a couple of times a month as a live act. We are not a professional band, we're semi-professional at best. Doing these performances has been a learning process for us, tightening everything up and honing our skills a bit with each show.

"We are trying to figure out how to make it not suck!"

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