July 29, 2010 8:00

Arcade Fire's Win Butler reveals love letters inspired 'The Suburbs' – video

Frontman talks about high school years in new clip

Photo Gallery: Arcade Fire
Photo: Phil Wallis

Arcade Fire's Win Butler has revealed how one summer of romantic letter-writing while he was a high school student influenced the band's new album 'The Suburbs'.

The frontman, chatting in an exclusive video interview, which you can watch on the right, said the song 'We Used To Wait' was inspired by romantic postal liaisons he used to undertake.

"In high school I had a letter-writing romance with a girl," he said. "I was trying to remember that time… waiting an entire summer, pretty much half a year, the anxiousness of waiting for letters to arrive."

He added: "All day every day there's almost this cloud of feeling hanging over everything. We'd [his family] be in Maine, I'd walk down to the post office and come back… the whole day was consumed by that feeling."

Get this week's issue of NME for an exclusive interview with Arcade Fire. It's on UK newsstands now, or available digitally worldwide.

'The Suburbs' is released on Monday (August 2).