Hy

HY stood out as Japan's top-selling indie rock act throughout the 2000s, though the designation "indie" there referred strictly to an act's label affiliation rather than any stylistic trait. The group's fifth release, Hearty, earned the label "genre-less," an apt tag for a unit whose output blended bright, radio-friendly pop/rock with touches of hip-hop and hard rock. That same melodic focus enabled HY to shatter multiple sales benchmarks only a handful of years into their run, all while remaining one of the few Japanese groups that never issued a single.

The quintet formed in Okinawa while its members were still in high school: Hideyuki Shinzato, Shun Naka, Shinsuke Kyoda, Izumi Nakasone, and Yuhei Miyazato. They borrowed their name from the Okinawa district of Higashi Yakena and first drew crowds through busking, which generated enough local interest for the limited pressing of their debut album Departure (2001) to disappear immediately, leading to a nationwide rollout the following year on the modest imprint Climax Entertainment—an association the band maintained despite overtures from larger companies. Extensive road work further elevated their profile: in 2002 they performed at a festival in Paris, mounted their initial nationwide trek, and appeared alongside Linkin Park at Budokan. Those accomplishments propelled their second album, Street Story (2003), to become only the second million-selling indie title in Japan and the first to top the overall album chart—an achievement the next two records, Trunk (2004) and Confidence (2005), would duplicate. HY then filled every seat on a 47-date domestic tour, after which they headlined both Budokan and Osaka-Jo Hall, the former show aired live on national television. Their itinerary wrapped with seven concerts across the United States and Canada plus several club dates back home in 2007. A year-long hiatus followed before the band resurfaced in 2008 with Hearty, which entered the chart at number two, and launched another extensive Japanese tour that same year.