Mando Diao

Borlange, Sweden's Mando Diao came together in the late 1990s while its members were still teenagers, fusing garage-rock attitude with Brit-pop flair and a wide array of additional influences. Over the following ten years the group rose to become one of Sweden's leading rock acts. Their second album, Hurricane Bar, broke through in 2004, after which international recognition kept growing via the hip-hop-tinged Give Me Fire in 2009 and the Swedish-language chart-topper Infruset in 2012. Later records ventured further into electronic rock and vintage soul textures, culminating in the high-energy, no-frills rock & roll of Bang in 2019.

The story reaches back to 1995, when singer/songwriter/keyboardist Daniel Häglund and singer/songwriter/guitarist Björn Dixgärd performed together in a band called Butler. Once that project ended, the two kept writing and playing, soon adding bassist Fredrik Nilsson, guitarist Gustaf Noren, and drummer Anton Grahnstrom; Nilsson and Grahnstrom were later succeeded by Carl Johan Fogelklou and Samuel Giers. By 1999 the outfit had adopted the name Mando Diao, taken from a dream of Dixgärd's. The musicians refined a sound that mixed pop, mod, soul, R&B, and Brit-pop into something distinctive yet enduring. Their first EP, Motown Blood, appeared in 2002 on the Majesty and Capitol labels. Strong notices for the release, along with comparisons to the Strokes and the Hives, lifted the band's visibility, leading to Swedish tours alongside the Hellacopters and Kent. Later in the year the singles "Mr. Moon" and "The Band" built excitement for the debut full-length Bring 'Em In, which was largely tracked in the group's basement rehearsal room. Mute Records brought the album to American listeners the following year.

Hurricane Bar reached Swedish stores in 2004 and arrived stateside in 2005, with Ode to Ochrasy following in 2006. While supporting these releases on the road, the band found time to lay down its fourth studio album, Never Seen the Light of Day, which surfaced worldwide in late 2007 at the same time Björn Dixgärd embarked on a solo tour. Two years afterward came Give Me Fire, whose percussion-rich production was handled by the Salazar Brothers; the record debuted at number one in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and reached number two in Sweden. A deluxe edition and an MTV Unplugged set both appeared in 2010.

Give Me Fire finally reached the United States in mid-2011. That same year Samuel Giers departed and drummer Patrik Heikinpieti came aboard. For Infruset in 2012, Noren and Dixgärd drew on poems by Gustaf Fröding, resulting in the band's first album sung entirely in Swedish. The release earned quadruple-platinum status in Sweden, captured a Grammy Award, and prompted the companion disc Infruset Guld in 2013. Further exploration arrived with Ælita in 2014, titled after a Russian synthesizer and centered on electronic-rock textures. Guitarist Jens Siverstedt replaced Noren in 2015, and early the next year the group began work on its next record at Siverstedt's summer house on the island of Gotland. The sessions yielded Good Times, issued in May 2017 and rooted in the band's longstanding affection for 1960s rock and soul. Mando Diao handled production, recording, and mixing themselves for their ninth album, the explosive Bang, which emerged in 2019.