Arcade Fire

The success of Canadian band Arcade Fire definitively demolished the barriers between indie rock and the mainstream. Singer and multi-instrumentalist Win Butler formed the band in 2001 with guitarist Josh Deu when both were attending Concordia University in Montreal. Singer/keyboardist Regine Chassagne joined soon after. Later that year, with the lineup further filled out, the band began gigging and working on demos.

In 2003 they released their first EP, with Butler's brother Will coming aboard. Around this time, Deu quit the band. Signing to U.S indie label Merge Records, Arcade Fire put out their debut album, Funeral, in 2004.

With its combination of alt-rock edge and larger-than-life arrangements, the record became a surprise hit, entering the Top 200 album chart in America and becoming Merge's biggest seller ever. The 2007 follow-up, Neon Bible found the band working on an even larger canvas, as orchestral flourishes blended with an almost Springsteen-like grandiosity.

The combination appealed to both young indie-rock audiences and older classic-rock aficionados, expanding Arcade Fire's audience still further and raising the band's profile even higher, as the album went to No. 2 on the U.S. charts. The group's third album, 2011's The Suburbs, was an even bigger success than its predecessor, earning Arcade Fire an Album of the Year Grammy in 2012 and earning an enormous amount of acclaim from fans and critics alike.

2013's Reflektor, co-produced by LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy, went to No. 1 in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. 2015 saw the release of The Reflektor Tapes, a documentary about the recording process for the album. In 2016, after returning to live performance following a two-year layoff from touring, Arcade Fire took to Paris, where they began working on the follow-up to Reflektor.