Tame Impala

Kevin Parker spends months (or years) at a time tinkering away in his home studio, playing every instrument and singing every part on his self-produced albums as Tame Impala. Yet he gets the most satisfaction from taking those creations out on the road, as he told Apple Music in 2025: “Being on tour, there’s no other activity in my life that gives me such a sense of purpose.” Of course, Parker has always contained multitudes. Let’s not forget that he transformed psychedelic rock—and 21st-century pop—in such an impactful way that even Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Kanye couldn’t resist his influence. Parker started Tame Impala in 2007 from his Perth home, experimenting with an arsenal of reverb, phaser, delay, and fuzz pedals on his 2010 debut album InnerSpeaker. For 2012’s Lonerism, he loaded up on synths, found inspiration in Todd Rundgren, and locked into woozy pop grooves made of both dreams and nightmares. As Parker has looked further inward, his music—and musical circle—has continued to expand outward. By the mid-2020s, he had collaborated with Dua Lipa, Mark Ronson, and Lady Gaga. Parker has remained a unique outlet, embracing widescreen funk (2015’s Currents), mid-thirties introspection (2020’s The Slow Rush), and elegiac techno (2025’s “End of Summer”). He’s also proven his pop instincts over and over again, as when he spiked his fatherhood-inspired 2025 album Deadbeat with a breakout earworm in “Dracula.” The song’s later success as a viral remix (featuring BLACKPINK’s JENNIE) and dance trend only confirm that Parker’s work enjoys a long lifespan once he’s done with it—both onstage and off.