Djo

Djo serves as the performing moniker for American musician and actor Joe Keery, widely recognized for his portrayal of Steve Harrington in the Netflix horror-fantasy series Stranger Things. Under the Djo banner, Keery crafts an offbeat variety of psychedelic-tinged bedroom pop, showcased across his debut full-length Twenty Twenty from 2019 and the 2022 follow-up Decide that registered on Billboard charts.

Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Keery pursued theater studies at Chicago’s DePaul University and completed an acting degree there. During his university years, he joined forces with friends to establish the psych-pop outfit Post Animal, which issued its inaugural EP Post Animal Perform the Most Curious Water Activities in 2015. That year also brought his breakthrough casting as Steve Harrington on Stranger Things, a series that premiered the next summer via Netflix. In the wake of the program’s widespread acclaim, Keery maintained his acting commitments alongside guitar duties with Post Animal before departing the group in 2019.

Keery started laying down tracks during production lulls on the Stranger Things set, utilizing a makeshift studio inside his rented Atlanta residence. Handling the majority of instrumentation personally, he shaped a melodic, psych-infused bedroom pop aesthetic that coalesced into the album Twenty Twenty, released under the Djo name. His second LP, Decide, drew from ’70s psych and synth pop influences and appeared in September 2022, climbing to number nine on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart. A two-track companion project titled D-Sides emerged the following year.