Music Exploration

Carl Ashley Raphael Barât (; born 6 June 1978) is a British musician and actor, best known for being the co-frontman with Pete Doherty of the garage rock band The Libertines. He was the frontman and lead guitarist of Dirty Pretty Things, and in 2010 debuted a solo album. In 2014 he announced the creation of his new band, The Jackals.

Carl Barât was born in Basingstoke, north Hampshire, England on 6 June 1978, and spent most of his childhood in nearby Whitchurch, Hampshire. In a September 2004 interview with Blender Magazine, Barât mentioned having a French, Russian and Polish ethnic background.

As a youth, Barât divided his time between his divorced parents. His father, a former artist, worked in an armaments factory, and his mother, Chrissie, was part of the commune-dwelling counterculture and a member of peace groups such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Barât spent part of his childhood living with his mother on a commune in Somerset. He has one sister, actress-turned-singer Lucie Barât, who played Helen's handmaiden in the 2004 film Troy, founded publishing house and artistic organization Little Episodes, and is currently the lead singer of The Au Revoirs. He also has three half-siblings, one step brother and one step sister.

Miles Peter Kane (born 17 March 1986) is an English musician, best known as a solo artist and the co-frontman of the Last Shadow Puppets. He was also the former frontman of the Rascals, before the band announced their break-up in August 2009.

He is currently pursuing a solo career, and continues to be a part of the Last Shadow Puppets with Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner. His debut solo album, Colour of the Trap, was released on 9 May 2011 and the follow-up, Don't Forget Who You Are was released on 3 June 2013. His third solo album, Coup De Grace, was released on 10 August 2018 via Virgin EMI. His latest solo album, Change the Show, was released on 21 January 2022 through BMG Rights Management.

Yours, Dreamily, is the debut album by The Arcs, a side-project by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. The album was released on September 4, 2015.

The album originated as an Auerbach solo project but morphed into a collaborative effort, with musicians Leon Michels, Richard Swift, Homer Steinweiss, and Nick Movshon. All members of the band share songwriting credit for the album. It was recorded over two weeks at the Sound Factory in Los Angeles, Electric Lady Studios in New York, Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound in Nashville, and the Sound Mine in New York. Auerbach and Michels co-produced the album, and Tchad Blake mixed it. The New York-based all-female mariachi band Flor de Toloache perform backing vocals on several album tracks and the lead vocals on "Chains of Love".

FFS was a supergroup formed by Scottish indie rock band Franz Ferdinand and American art rock band Sparks. Their formation was announced on 9 March 2015, but the two bands had been recording since at least the mid-2000s. The group's eponymous debut studio album was recorded in late 2014 and released through the Domino Recording Company in the UK on 8 June and in the US on 9 June 2015.

Richard Willis Hawley (born 17 January 1967) is an English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer. After his first band Treebound Story (formed while he was still at school) broke up, Hawley found success as a member of Britpop band Longpigs in the 1990s. After that group broke up in 2000, he later joined the band Pulp, led by his friend Jarvis Cocker, for a short time. As a solo musician, Hawley has released eight studio albums. He has been nominated for a Mercury prize twice and once for a Brit Award. He has collaborated with Lisa Marie Presley, Shakespears Sister, Arctic Monkeys, Manic Street Preachers, Elbow, Duane Eddy, and Paul Weller.

Born in Sheffield, Hawley grew up with two sisters in a working-class area of the city. He was born with a cleft palate, which required numerous operations. Both his parents were musicians; his father Dave Hawley was a guitarist with a number of local bands (on his death, the Sheffield Star called him a "Sheffield music legend"), and his mother Lynne a singer. They divorced when he was 16 years old. He noted that "I always wrote songs since childhood" and realising that "you could actually make something up of your own was quite a big one then". He attended Hucklow Middle School together with future Pulp bassist Steve Mackey, and passed his O-levels. Hawley briefly worked at the local HMV.

Zipper Down is the fourth studio album from American rock band Eagles of Death Metal. It was released on October 2, 2015. The first single, "Complexity", was made available for streaming on Pitchfork Media's website in June 2015. The entire album was made available to stream in an exclusive by NPR on their website, on September 23, 2015. "Oh Girl", "I Love You All The Time" and "Complexity" were previously on Boots Electric's first album Honkey Kong and were remade for Zipper Down.

The album includes a cover of "Save a Prayer" by Duran Duran. The two bands played the song together on TFI Friday. Following the November 2015 Paris attacks, a Facebook campaign was launched to get the cover of "Save a Prayer" to no. 1. Duran Duran stated that they would donate all of their royalties from the cover to charity. The song ultimately peaked at number 53 for the chart dated the week after the attack.

Drenge are an English three-piece rock band made up of Eoin Loveless, on guitar and vocals, his younger brother Rory, on drums, and Rob Graham on bass. The brothers grew up in Castleton, Derbyshire, where they formed the band in 2010, relocating to Sheffield in 2014. The band take their name from something "that would sound like a noise that we would be playing on stage". Their name also translates into "Boys" in Danish. They have released three albums, Drenge (2013), Undertow (2015), and Strange Creatures (2019).

The Voidz (formerly Julian Casablancas+The Voidz) are an American rock band. They consist of Julian Casablancas (vocals), Jeramy "Beardo" Gritter (guitar), Amir Yaghmai (guitar), Jacob "Jake" Bercovici (bass, synthesizers), Alex Carapetis (drums), and Jeff Kite (keyboards). Their debut album was placed 50th in NMEs Top 50 Albums of 2014 list.

Jeff Kite, Alex Carapetis and Jake Bercovici had all worked with Casablancas previously. Kite and Carapetis appeared as part of the Sick Six live band (which also featured Danielle Haim), that backed Casablancas when touring his first solo album, Phrazes for the Young. Kite and Carapetis, along with Bercovici, also worked on "I Like the Night", a song Casablancas recorded as part of an advertising campaign he fronted for the French fashion label, Azzaro. Casablancas enjoyed working with the band and chose to collaborate with other musicians, in a similar format to the Sick Six, when recording his next album. Casablancas, Carapetis, Bercovici, and Kite, along with mutual friends Jeramy Gritter and Amir Yaghmai formed The Voidz and began writing music together.

Damon Albarn (; born 23 March 1968) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer, best known as the frontman and primary lyricist of the rock band Blur and as the co-creator and primary musical contributor of the virtual band Gorillaz.

Raised in Leytonstone, East London, and around Colchester, Essex, Albarn attended The Stanway School, where he met guitarist Graham Coxon and formed Blur. They released their debut album Leisure in 1991. After spending long periods touring the US, Albarn's songwriting became increasingly influenced by British bands from the 1960s. The result was the Blur albums Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), Parklife (1994) and The Great Escape (1995). All three received critical acclaim, while Blur gained mass popularity in the UK, aided by a Britpop chart rivalry with Oasis. Subsequent albums such as Blur (1997), 13 (1999) and Think Tank (2003) incorporated influences from lo-fi, art rock, electronic and world music. These were followed by The Magic Whip (2015), Blur's first studio album in 12 years.

Deap Vally are an American rock duo, formed in Los Angeles, California in 2011. The group consists of Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards. They have released three albums, an EP and a number of singles. Both albums reached the UK Albums Chart.

Paul Julian Banks (born 3 May 1978) is an American–British musician, singer, songwriter, and DJ. He is best known as the lead vocalist, lyricist, and guitarist of the rock band Interpol. He released a solo album called Julian Plenti is... Skyscraper in 2009 under the name Julian Plenti, though his solo material is now recorded under his real name. As a singer, his voice lies in the baritone range.

Banks was born in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, on 3 May 1978, to English parents. His father worked in a corporate job for an automobile manufacturer, and his employment required that their family relocate frequently. His family left England when Banks was three years old and moved to the United States, settling in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. They subsequently moved to Spain when he was around 12, and it was here that he studied at the American School of Madrid in Pozuelo de Alarcón before the family moved back to the U.S. to settle in New Jersey. His father was later transferred to Mexico, where Banks finished high school at the American School Foundation in Mexico City. Describing his childhood, Banks recalled: "We moved around like a military family, but we weren't a military family."

Teleman are an English indie pop band formed in London in 2011. The group consists of Thomas Sanders, Pete Cattermoul (bass) and Hiro Amamiya (drums).

Richard Daniel Warren (born 3 June 1973 in Sutton-in-Ashfield) is an English musician, songwriter and producer.

Warren signed his first record deal with Heavenly Records at the height of Britpop in 1996, as one third of The Hybirds.

In 1999 when the band split, he branched out on his own and away from guitar-led pop, signing to Mute Records as Echoboy after Daniel Miller heard his releases on Earworm Records following his self-released 12" Flashlegs (Suite). Warren went on to release several self-produced solo albums on Mute as well as Giraffe, which was produced by Flood, and having put together a band he toured extensively with, amongst others, Elastica, Add N to (X) and Broadcast .

Temples are an English rock band, formed in Kettering, England in 2012 by singer and guitarist James Bagshaw and bassist Tom Walmsley. The band's lineup was later completed with the addition of keyboardist and rhythm guitarist Adam Smith and drummer Rens Ottink.

They have released three studio albums, two EPs, and a number of singles. Their debut album, Sun Structures, was released in 2014 and charted at number seven in the UK. They are signed to ATO Records and have toured internationally both as a support act and as the headliner.

The band was initially formed as a home studio project in mid 2012. Walmsley and Bagshaw had known each other for years before these projects. It was at this point that they were in rival bands based in their hometown of Kettering. The duo had later worked together in The Moons, with Bagshaw also having sessioned with the Lightning Seeds and co-fronted another earlier Kettering band Sukie who formed in 2006 and charted at No 1 in the UK Indie Chart with their debut single "Pink-A-Pade". Sukie were featured in the fanzine "Siren", edited and created by Walmsley to document Kettering's music scene.

Mini Mansions are an American band founded by Zach Dawes, Tyler Parkford, and Queens of the Stone Age bassist Michael Shuman. Mini Mansions' style has been compared to The Beatles, Elliott Smith, and Fountains of Wayne.

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds are an English rock band formed in 2010 as the solo moniker of former Oasis songwriter, lead guitarist, and backing vocalist Noel Gallagher. The touring band consists of former Oasis members Gem Archer (guitar), Mike Rowe (piano), and Chris Sharrock (drums), as well as former Zutons member Russell Pritchard (bass). The band has also had a variety of guests contribute to albums such as the Crouch End Festival Chorus, Amorphous Androgynous, Johnny Marr, and Paul Weller.

Since his departure from Oasis in August 2009, many speculated that Gallagher might record a solo album. In July 2011, he held a press conference to confirm this, after denying rumours from his brother Liam had already heard the tracks featured on it. Later that year, Noel released the project's self-titled debut album. Several singles from the album were released, including "The Death of You and Me", "If I Had a Gun...", "AKA... What a Life!", "Dream On", and "Everybody's on the Run". In 2015, High Flying Birds released their second album, Chasing Yesterday. Their third, Who Built the Moon?, was released in November 2017, which was followed by 3 EPs released between 2019 and 2020. Their fourth studio album is due in May 2023.

Tame Impala is the psychedelic music project of Australian multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker. In the recording studio, Parker writes, records, performs, and produces all of the project's music. As a touring act, Tame Impala consists of Parker, Dominic Simper, Jay Watson, Cam Avery, and Julien Barbagallo. The group has a close affiliation with fellow Australian psychedelic rock band Pond, sharing members and collaborators, including Nick Allbrook, formerly a live member of Tame Impala. Originally signed to Modular Recordings, Tame Impala is now signed to Interscope Records in the United States and Fiction Records in the UK.

The Family Rain are an English blues rock band, formed in Bath in 2011 by brothers William, Ollie and Timothy Walter. The band released three EPs, several singles and debut album “Under The Volcano”, before splitting up in 2016. The band announced their return in November 2019 via social media.

Before The Family Rain, the three brothers were originally in a Darkness-influenced Rock Pirates, formed in 2004 with guitarist Tom Johnson, who were described as an "irony-free Darkness with bare torsos and blond highlights". The band had "a repertoire of over 10 self-written classics and can also play over 3 hours worth of rock covers". The band changed their name to Dark Horse when they reached 20 and decided to take the band more seriously and released their self-titled debut EP in February 2010. The band initially denied all knowledge of Rock Pirates/Dark Horse, before dismissing their previous incarnation as a "shit covers band" and being formed "when we were learning our instruments".