Atlas Genius

Hooky, sharp-edged synth rockers Atlas Genius draw from influences such as Phoenix, the Beatles, and Beck. Their emergence was anything but gradual: when their 2011 debut single, "Trojans," was featured on a blog, it was greeted with tens of thousands of downloads, a record deal, and an eventual hundreds of millions of plays with the rise of streaming services in the years to follow. The tune helped land their 2013 debut album, When It Was Now, in the Billboard 200 Top 40. Their second full-length, 2015's Inanimate Objects, didn't fare quite as well but still placed in the bottom half of the chart while becoming an alternative Top 20 hit. Although the band continued to tour off and on and release the occasional single, it was nearly ten years before they returned with their third LP, End of the Tunnel -- and a familiar sound -- in 2024.