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Phoenix - composed of Thomas Mars, Christian Mazzalai, Laurent Brancowitz, and Deck d'Arcy - grew up together in Versailles, where it felt "like growing up in a museum," Mars says. "Everything great was in the past. So we had this obsession with music that sounded new." They made music in spite of it, and spent the next three decades proving that the best things hadn't already happened. What started in a garage became one of the most beloved catalogs in modern rock.
Their 2009 album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix not only launched them into the mainstream, but also rewrote what indie rock could feel like. "Lisztomania" and "1901" alone carved Phoenix's name into the indie rock canon, and the record landed in the top 10 of virtually every year-end list before winning the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 2010. A Victoire de la Musique for Best Rock Album followed in 2014 for Bankrupt!, and along the way the band contributed music to each of Sofia Coppola's feature films. They've headlined Coachella and sold out Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl, and Bercy in Paris. In August 2024, they performed at the Closing Ceremony of the Paris Olympics at the Stade de France to a global audience of hundreds of millions, breaking Shazam records with their rework of "Nightcall" alongside Angèle and Kavinsky.
Their seventh and most recent album, Alpha Zulu, their first since 2017's Ti Amo, was recorded inside Paris' Musée des Arts Décoratifs, within the Louvre Palace, during the pandemic. Despite initial fears of being surrounded by too much beauty, they wrote nearly the entire album within the first ten days. The record serves as a tribute to their late producer and close friend Philippe Zdar, who died in 2019 after helping shape some of their most celebrated work. Clash called the result "an apt testament to the group's continuing vitality."