Louis The Child: “Creating This New Album Felt Like Visiting an Old Childhood Friend”

Beatport links up with US dance music duo Louis The Child at Red Rocks Amphitheater to learn all about the animating principle behind their sound, formative moments from their youth, and the amorous attitude behind their new album, 'The Sun Comes Up.'

Logan Sasser
8 min •
Oct 10, 2024
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When we sat down with Louis The Child backstage at Red Rocks Amphitheater — three hours before they took the stage to celebrate the release of their sophomore album, The Sun Comes Up — they were on cloud nine.

Clear blue skies and pleasant 65-degree weather formed the ideal setting to mark the occasion. This tour, aptly named A Day In The Sun, is taking place around the country in the afternoons, before the sun goes down. On this particular day in Colorado, it seemed like the duo’s perfect “day in the sun.”

“Today is kind of our ideal ‘day in the sun,’” Robby Hauldren, one-half of the platinum-selling duo Louis The Child, said. “The sun is out, and it’s not too hot. But more importantly, we’re surrounded by the right people. That makes such a huge difference in any experience.”

But as the day went on, clouds began to cover the sky in every direction, and rain steadily picked up to a proper rain shower. When Louis The Child took the stage, cold raindrops fell ironically on Red Rock’s iconic stone bleachers.

But that didn’t stop fans from dancing, smiling, and laughing while Louis The Child ventured through their catalog of radio hits, experimental pop tunes, and the bubbly dance music on The Sun Comes Up.

This is the deeper meaning behind The Sun Comes Up; it’s a statement not entirely against the hardships of life. Instead, it’s an embrace of life’s grandest, and smallest, adventures despite hard times.

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Photo by: @jasonsiegel

“When life gets tough, it’s important to remember that it’s a gift to be alive at all,” Hauldren said. “There are so many simple things to be grateful for. If you have a roof over your head and your body works, you’re doing good in the grand scheme of things.”

“That’s the vibe we want The Sun Comes Up to give off,” Freddy Kennett, the other half of Louis The Child, continued. “It feels like we’re floating with the clouds recently, and we want people to feel that way too. Imagine that everyone is a friend, and the clouds are smiling. It’s okay to be kind of delusional. Because of course the clouds aren’t real. They can’t actually smile at you, but it feels good to imagine they are.”

The cover of Louis The Child’s new album, The Sun Comes Up, is a cheeky animation that gives life to three characters the duo refers to “cloud monsters,” although they're the fun kind of monsters, not the scary kind — like Sully and Mike Wazowski when they’re off duty.

The music on The Sun Comes Up acts in a similar fashion: reconnecting with a wonderful, child-like view of the world, regardless of life’s many complications.

Or, as Kennett puts it: “Viewing life as an adventure can be an antidote to hard times. That’s what we want this album to represent.”

“When we were making this album, every studio session felt like a mini-adventure with our friends. That became an ongoing theme; we realized that, even though the world can feel like a sad and lonely place sometimes, you can usually find some sort of adventure in it.”

This idea inspired the cloud monsters on The Sun Comes Up album cover and the playful nature of the tracklist. “We were asking ourselves: What happens when you view the world as a playground where everyone and everything is just waiting to go on a little adventure with you? I love that idea.”

The Sun Comes Up calls back to Louis The Child’s earliest music — much of which they created when they were teenagers. The oldest tracks in their catalog represent the youthful nature of their inception, filled with bubbling optimism (“Love Is Alive”), upbeat party anthems (“Weekend”) and innocent love songs (“It’s Strange”). These themes are best represented in their appropriately titled Kids At Play EP.

But as they grew up, so did their music.

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Photos by: @shanphotomaker
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In 2020, Louis The Child released their debut album, Here For Now, which still stands as one of their most mature records to date. The album, created shortly after Kennett’s grandfather passed away, deals with themes of death and “memento mori” philosophy: “Here For Now” is a title that’s meant to be taken literally.

Thematically, Here For Now is much more serious than most of Louis The Child’s catalog. Musically, however, it maintains the euphoric, pop-adjacent dance elements that defined the early years of their career, although slightly more experimental in its scope and sound design.

Then, in 2022, they dropped Black Marble — a 17-track exploration of left-field electronic music laced with dark techno undertones. In every way, it was a sharp departure from the sound and style Louis The Child is known for. But it might be the most Chicago-inspired project they’ve ever made.

When Madeon performed at Chicago’s Bottom Lounge venue in 2012, Hauldren and Kennett (both in their early teens) met each other for the first time on the dance floor. Recognizing their mutual passion for dance music, the duo began making music together almost immediately.

“There were lots of people at our high school that were interested in dance music, but very few were ready to give it their all as a career path at that age.” Kennett said. “That’s what stood out about Robby when I first met him — he was ready to put 100% of his energy into making music. Lots of things have changed in the past 12 years, but that’s always remained the same.”

It took 12 years for Louis The Child to officially release a track with Madeon, the artists who originally brought the duo together, but it was well worth the wait.

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Photo by: @jasonsiegel

The track, “Believe It,” is the first song on The Sun Comes Up, and properly sets the stage for the record’s return to form in both sound and conception for Louis The Child. “Creating that song felt kind of magical,” Hauldren said. “We’ve known Madeon all these years, and we’ve written a few songs with him but nothing was ever released. When we made ‘Believe It’ it felt like capturing lightning in a bottle. It’s such a full-circle moment for all of us.”

Like much of the material on The Sun Comes Up, ‘Believe It’ has that classic, bubbly Louis The Child sound that defined the early years of their career. But The Sun Comes Up isn’t a nostalgia trip or regression into mid-2010s dance music tropes.

Instead, it’s a love letter to their truest musical influences and a grateful expression of their 12-year journey together through all the highs and lows.

“We definitely tapped into some of the sounds we were making when Louis The Child first started,” Haludren said. “But we approached these sounds with a decade of new experiences. Creating The Sun Comes Up felt like visiting an old childhood friend, because even though you’re different from when you used to see each other as kids, there’s still something special there.”


Louis The Child's third studio album, The Sun Comes Up, is out now via Interscope. Listen below and
buy it on Beatport.

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