Britpop may be having a second Renaissance but The Kooks' Luke Pritchard is having none of it.

"Coldplay or Keane may believe what they're doing but there's no meaning, it's just music. With the new Coldplay album I'm just not excited. I find it really bland and uninventive. It's not new, it's not different, it's not exciting."

Luke turns quieter and adds, "But who the f*** am I to say they're wrong?"

He is, in fact, the 20-year-old singer whose band were signed to Virgin two months after forming, on the strength of one song. "We said to them, you've gotta let us do our own thing for a year, we're not ready'."

Luke, Hugh, Max and Paul met at the Brighton Institute Of Modern Music and sound like bits of The Clash, Supergrass, early Blur and Lou Reed stapled together.

Maybe it's this speedy success which makes Luke so cutting about contemporaries.

"We have a massive responsibility to our generation," he says. "There's nothing going on. It's just boring, boring, boring. There's so much stuff that means absolutely nothing."

Debut single Eddie's Gun is about impotence. "It's just a bit of a spoof song," bluffs Luke. "I don't know why I wrote it. When it happened to me it wasn't even a big deal because I knew her."

Could he be talking about his famous ex, Katie Melua?

"I dunno, I dunno. I'm getting shy about it. I may not be," he says, unconvincingly.

The mystery muse returns for B-side, The Bus Song. "I was pretty depressed," Luke explains. "I got on this bus in Brighton and I just wanted to collect my thoughts and listen to Jimi Hendrix."

So why were you depressed, Luke?

"Um, you know what, I can't even remember," he laughs. "Probably a woman."

Katie?

"Possibly. Draw your own conclusions."

Luke and Katie met last year at the Brit School in Croydon. "Her songs have a lot of soul, a lot of weight. When I started the band, I went to see her play but after about a month of her being really successful, I wanted to get away from that. I made a really big effort, actually, to try and separate myself from it."

Luke and bassist Max have just moved from Kemp Town to Hove but they won't be seeing much of their flat because they are currently touring.

So what would he say if Coldplay invited them on tour? "I go to Coldplay concerts," Luke protests. "I'm not trying to slag off the guys. No music's better than anything else, it's just opinion."

The Kooks play Concorde 2 (supporting The Dead 60s) on Wednesday, June 22. Starts 8pm, tickets £7, call 01273 673311