Mélanie Pain is a French indie pop singer from Caen. Having relocated to Paris, she spends her days in a design agency and her nights singing for electro and pop music projects. It is with Villeneuve’s album that Mélanie found her right voice. Sweet and touching with a voice midway between Astrud Gilberto and Kim Deal, Mélanie has gained attention on a few tracks for M83. As a vocalist on the M83 album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (2003), singing on the songs “Run Into Flowers,” “0078h,” and “Beauties Can Die.”
She is mostly known for being the female vocalist in Villeneuve. She also performs with the band Nouvelle Vague as well as being a solo artist. Hailing from Aix-en-Provence, Pain studied political sciences before moving to Paris to work in a web agency, and then a design agency. Not originally intending to be a singer, a demo she had recorded vocals on for a friend accidentally found its way into the hands of Nouvelle Vague. Subsequently, she has toured for five years with the band.
Nouvelle Vague: When Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux told her about Nouvelle Vague, she accepted the idea without hesitating. Her version of Tainted Love with Villeneuve was a way for her to experience the pleasure of singing cult songs from a different generation.
On the group’s second album, Bande à Part (2006), she sang five songs, among them cover versions of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and New Order’s “Blue Monday,” and on their third album, 3 (2009), she sang a version of Depeche Mode’s “Master and Servant” alongside Martin Gore and a version of Echo & the Bunnymen’s “All My Colours” alongside Ian McCulloch.
She sings in both French and English, after years of covering English songs for Nouvelle Vague. Her influences include The Pixies, Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey and Nick Drake. Mélanie recorded the song “La Cigarette” for the compilation album Le Pop 4 (released April 2007) In April 2009, Pain released her first solo album entitled My Name featuring artists such as Julien Dore, Phoebe Killdeer and Thomas Dybdahl.
