Olivier Libaux and Marc Collin helm the French musical collective Nouvelle Vague, rapidly and steadily gaining acclaim by revamping New Wave and punk songs as artsy, slinky '60s-style tracks, most often based on a bossa nova feel. Their newest blended effort, simply titled 3, continues to deftly puree the pair's remixes with a wide range of female vocalists from Mélanie Pain to Phoebe Killdeer to Eloisia. And it all started with a little Madness.

"We have many favorite '80s bands," Olivier Libaux says, "like Madness, for instance. We feel also that there are still bands that have been completely underrated, like Wall of Voodoo, Urban Verbs, and Wire. We were big fans of punk and new wave music in the '80s, when we were teenagers; then we turned into musicians, producers, and arrangers."

It may have begun with Suggs and crew, but it would be Joy Division that would be the subject of the pair's first cover attempt. "Nouvelle Vague started with a simple idea in the early '00s," Libaux says, "to try to cover (Joy Division's) "Love Will Tear Us Apart." The idea behind it was 'how will this song sound in bossa nova? What will stay of the songwriting once we have removed the drums, bass, guitar, and the power of Ian Curtis' vocals - and replace them with a warm bossa nova arrangement and a female singing?' It worked perfectly," he continues, "the song was still great. So we worked on other songs too, and were very happy with the result; we kept working on this project, and after a while named it Nouvelle Vague, French for both the expressions of New Wave and bossa nova."

With the '80s making a pretty big return lately on the fashion scene - which is, of course, closely knit with the music scene - Nouvelle Vague are poised to compliment the current trends with their music, even though they were quite far ahead of the curve in the first place.

"When we started Nouvelle Vague in 2002, new wave music was partly forgotten," Libaux says, "a strange thing happened to this music in the '90s - it completely disappeared. The whole situation was unfair. Nowadays, the '80s music is back again, and it's a good thing, I think. In our opinion, the 1977-1983 period has maybe been one of the most creative in the history of pop music, in terms of eclecticism and the creation of new sounds."

Libaux and Collin's own creation of new sounds takes the shape of a "team" of sorts, as Libaux puts it.

"We work with 15 different female singers," he explains, "when we work on a song, we just think about the best voice to interpret it, the best voice, accent, etc. A song is only achieved when it's sung, so we are very careful with the singer."

Libaux further explains that production work for 3 took place in Paris, and that for this particular album, one of the highlights was actually working with some of the original artists who recorded the songs that Nouvelle Vague were reworking, in a kind of Back-to-the-Future scenario.

"That was the great thing with this one," Libaux enthuses, "we worked with Ian MacCulloch, Barry Adamson, Terry Hall, Chris Bailey, and Martin Gore; apart from Martin, who recorded his backing vocals in NYC and sent us the files through the internet, we could meet all the others for real. We had great experiences meeting and working with them; and we heard funny stories - these guys have so much to say - meeting them was unforgettable, as they are just great artists and great human beings."

Great artists who craft great music that stands up on its own - and also via Nouvelle Vague's equally creative remixes, which fans worldwide are getting plenty of chances to hear live.

"We are playing at the moment almost every night," Libaux says, "since last May, we have been on a huge tour; we have already been in many countries, and still have many to visit, so fall and winter will be made of touring."

Good news for American fans, too - Nouvelle Vague have made plans to tour the U.S. this upcoming January and February.

"We already played four great shows last June, in NYC, Washington DC, San Francisco, and Los Angeles," Libaux says, "and can't wait to be back again - we really enjoy staying for a while in your country, and we love to play in the U.S."