KALEO celebrates ten years since its massive debut

When KALEO signed with Atlantic Records in 2015, there wasn’t much buzz around the Icelandic band stateside. The group had gained some viral virility with hit single, “All the Pretty Girls,” before then, and turns out, they were just getting started.

KALEO quickly introduced itself to the global stage once the group’s 2016 major label debut, “A/B,” blew up behind earworms “No Good” and “Way Down We Go,” which has garnered more than a billion (yes, with a “B”) streams to date. It erupted worldwide, launching to the top spot on the U.S. Billboard Alternative Songs chart. The band evened performed it live in an Icelandic volcano!

For vocalist-guitarist JJ Julius Son — who officially formed KALEO with drummer David Antonsson, bassist Daniel Kristjansson and lead guitarist Rubin Pollock in 2012 — the seemingly overnight success wasn’t so much sudden fame as it was a cumulative pop-culture phenomena that put the Icelanders at the forefront of modern blues-rock.

“I don’t think there was one defining moment where it suddenly felt like a global hit. It really happened gradually over the course of about a year,” he says. “We just kept seeing the songs reach more and more people in different parts of the world, and every show seemed to get bigger than the last. It was a very exciting time. Looking back now, it’s pretty amazing to see how far that record reached.”

Since then, JJ & Co has collected over seventy international gold, platinum and diamond certifications, not to mention countless sold-out headlining shows and appearances at pretty much every major festival, particularly Coachella, Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo. The collective’s music could be heard in numerous television shows, too, such as “Yellowstone,” “The Morning Show,” “Law & Order,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Suits,” as well as EA Sports video games, including Madden NFL, NHL and FIFA.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of that initial “A/B” shockwave. The band is celebrating it with a brand-new deluxe edition. The limited-edition double EP also features previously unreleased recordings and unique live cuts. Subsequently, a North American tour is underway that includes a stop at Red Rocks on Tuesday, July 14. Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Elle King is also on the bill.

Pinpointing what exactly made “A/B” so insatiably satisfying and propulsive eludes JJ, even so many years after the fact. Perhaps the rawness young musicians naturally have had something to do with it, he ponders. Or the fact that Iceland wasn’t particularly known for putting out such gigantic arena rock and that felt exotic, at least to American audiences.

“For me personally, it’s hard to say because I put a lot into every record we make. But it was our first album, and I think there’s always something special about that,” JJ shares. “We just made the music we wanted to make, and thankfully people connected with it.”

KALEO is no one-album wonder, either, as the momentum’s maintained and continued over the past decade, cementing the group alongside similar native musical exports Sigur Rós and Björk. In that sense, “A/B” serves more as a launching point more than anything in hindsight (they’ve always been big in Iceland, for the record). That time meant so much to the band, but it’s not necessarily KALEO’s defining moment, as JJ hints at plans to get back into the studio after the upcoming spring Euro run. But for now, he’s enjoying revisiting “A/B.”  

“We still play those songs every night, and people always respond to them. That’s a great feeling,” JJ concludes. “I just hope the record has aged well and that people still enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoy playing it.”