Mystery Jets

A relatively quirky outlier among the plethora of melodic British guitar bands to appear during the 2000s, Mystery Jets emerged from Eel Pie Island near London. Co-founded in 2003 by then-18-year-old Blaine Harrison (who was born with spina bifida) and his then-53-year-old guitarist/lyricist father, Henry, the Jets reflected an early enthusiasm for ’60s prog pop on their 2006 debut, Making Dens, whose zippy single “The Boy Who Ran Away” charted at 23 in the UK. With 2008’s Twenty One, though, their music began to drift toward pop’s shores. They added funk and a dance-floor sheen to their hooks on 2010’s Serotonin, before trying out acoustic American country rock on 2012’s Radlands. With his spina bifida an ongoing issue, Harrison celebrated Britain’s National Health Service in the raging “Hospital Radio”, which joined “History Has Its Eyes on You” and other politically prompted tracks on the band's 2020 release, A Billion Heartbeats.