Perhaps you, too, have had the displeasure of stumbling across the Velvet Sundown on Spotify or social media. The psych-rock “band” made headlines last month after they’d amassed hundreds of thousands of streams on the platform, despite existing for only a few weeks. They currently have 750,000 Spotify listeners. The only problem is that they don’t actually exist. Their press “photos” are comically unnatural-looking, their Spotify bio is a boilerplate nothing burger, and the music is just as bland as you’d expect. They have social media accounts where they’ve noticeably pushed back against AI accusations: “They said we’re not real. Maybe you aren’t either.” Now, a spokesperson for the Velvet Sundown has confirmed to Rolling Stone that they are, in fact, not real.
Abby Jones | July 2, 2025
Perhaps you, too, have had the displeasure of stumbling across the Velvet Sundown on Spotify or social media. The psych-rock “band” made headlines last month after they’d amassed hundreds of thousands of streams on the platform, despite existing for only a few weeks. They currently have 750,000 Spotify listeners. The only problem is that they don’t actually exist. Their press “photos” are comically unnatural-looking, their Spotify bio is a boilerplate nothing burger, and the music is just as bland as you’d expect. They have social media accounts where they’ve noticeably pushed back against AI accusations: “They said we’re not real. Maybe you aren’t either.” Now, a spokesperson for the Velvet Sundown has confirmed to Rolling Stone that they are, in fact, not real.