Royal Bangs

Tennessee five-piece Royal Bangs' 2008 album ‘We Breed Champions’ was supposed to be a parting gesture before heading to Gallic soil, lead singer Ryan Schaefer explains. “I was getting ready to leave…we figured that that was kind of the end of it, we’re not gonna do the band anymore, we should just document these songs. We made, like, a hundred copies, forwarded them to people and that was that.” Thanks to one lucky MySpace mouseclick, ‘that’ wasn’t that at all.

Royal Bangs cofounder and Schaefer’s high school friend Chris Rusk added Audio Eagle Records as a friend on MySpace; label boss and The Black Keys’ drummer Patrick Carney like their sound so much, he signed them.