Marcus Mumford Regrets Naming Mumford and Sons After Himself

Mumford and Sons are, at least to a degree, leaving the past behind them and forging on without their iconic banjos on the new electrically leaning album Wilder Mind, set to be released on May 4. If the band's name wasn't already engrained in the pop culture zeitgeist, frontman Marcus Mumford would love to change that along with their sound, too.

"I definitely regret the band name," he said. "If I'd known it was going to go this way, I would have wanted to call it anything other than my last name. It's a ball-ache. We thought about changing it, but it's a bit late now."

This admission comes as part of an NME article in which the band discussed the change in their aesthetic. "I think it would be fair to say that we've noticed that in some of our old photos, we look like absolute idiots," keyboard player Ben Lovett said. "There were so many car crashes. We look like us in our photos now. I don't even want to describe how we used to look."

Lovett has previously told NME the band's change in sound was "natural" and Mumford added that their current look is by no means fabricated. "We didn't sit down and say, 'Let's wear leather, guys,'" Mumford said. "Over an eight-year period, you behave differently. You go to different places, you probably have different friends. You wear different clothes. We didn't hire a stylist and say, 'Let's rebrand ourselves.'"

Proof that people change: Mumford is apparently working on some sort of hip-hop project with producer 88 Keys, who has worked with Kanye West.

Mumford and Sons – "Snake Eyes" (Live)