Breaking Artist: Tokyo Police Club

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Who: Tokyo Police Club, a Toronto quartet who played to audiences at the Coachella, Lollapalooza and Glastonbury festivals before they turned twenty-one or even released their debut album.

Sounds Like: Too poppy to be post-punk but too clean to be garage-rock, TPC marry bright keyboards and the buoyant voice of singer/bassist Dave Monk into perfect danceable two-minute tunes on their debut album Elephant Shell.

Vital Stats:

• After ten years of friendship, TPC decided to start a band after seeing Radiohead live in 2001, even though no one at the time knew how to play any instruments. "I taught myself how to sing," says Monks. "I was tone-deaf until I was 15."

• Between their debut EP A Lesson in Crime and their album Elephant Shell, the band has crammed nineteen songs into only forty-four minutes. "It's just a product of our attention span," says guitarist Josh Hook.

• Instead of hanging out in bars and strip clubs like other bands their age, the band frequents bookstores and art galleries. "The quirky-hipster part of the music industry is really starting to bug me," keyboardist Graham Wright jokes. "But the quirky-hipster part of the book industry is pretty great."

Hear It Now: Elephant Shell is in stores and at digital music services now. Click above to check out the band performing an unplugged version of their song "Graves" exclusively for RollingStone.com.

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Song Stories

“Karma Chameleon”

Culture Club | 1983

Boy George has said this song was about standing by what you believe in. However, at the time, he was involved in a secret affair with Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. "Now people can understand the songs better," he said. "They were written about my relationship with Jon, and they were also written about being a gay man in a homophobic world." The lines "If I listen to your lies, would you say/I'm a man without conviction/I'm a man who doesn't know how to sell a contradiction," described his life at the time, he said. "I was selling this big lie."

More Song Stories entries »

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