The Viral Rock Band That Was Actually Created With AI

In June 2025, a new rock band named the Velvet Sundown started uploading music to the streaming platform Spotify. With a hazy sound harking back to classic Americana of the 1970s, they quickly amassed an online listenership that any up-and-coming artist would be jealous of. Hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners streamed their debut album, "Floating on Echoes," and its follow-up, "Dust and Silence," which arrived on streaming platforms just two weeks later. By mid-July, the Velvet Sundown's biggest song, "Dust on the Wind," had been streamed more than 1.5 million times on Spotify alone.

But even in the early days of their online presence, music fans, critics, and websites were sounding the alarm that there was something fishy about the Velvet Sundown. Why were the images of the band — who were named in their bio as singer and mellotron player Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, synth player Milo Raines, and percussionist Orion "Rio" Del Mar — creepily cartoonish and all smothered in an admittedly retro but somehow off-putting filter? And why was their music so utterly derivative of 1970s rock music while remaining so eerily flawless? Despite protestations from the band's purported PR and social media posts from its supposed members, it became clear a few weeks later that the band was entirely fabricated: An AI confection thrown together in a few clicks using generative audio and image tools. 

Are listeners being fooled by such developments, or is the use of AI within the music industry now as inevitable as its use in the military and elsewhere? The Velvet Sundown has proven to be one of the most controversial music news stories of the year, as the industry struggles to catch up with the implications of AI music.

The first major outlet to suggest that there was something amiss about the Velvet Sundown was TechRadar, with journalist Graham Barlow reporting that the band was "either AI or a very clever marketing campaign." But in those early days, the Velvet Sundown appeared to be making a concerted effort to convince the world that it was a real, living band. "Absolutely crazy that so-called 'journalists' keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that the Velvet Sundown is 'AI-generated' with zero evidence," they posted on X, adding: "Not a single one of these 'writers' has reached out, visited a show, or listened beyond the Spotify algorithm." However, when Barlow later attempted to organize an interview with the band's members, he received no response. Around the same time, the streaming platform Deezer flagged the Velvet Sundown's music as being AI-generated.

By the start of July, the Velvet Sundown had contacted TechRadar to claim that some of the social media posts appearing online were the work of fakes, further muddying the waters as to what was real as listeners debated the truth of the band's existence. But whoever was behind them later changed tack. They changed the band's bio and posting on their channels to admit that the Velvet Sundown was an AI project, the goals of which were described in lofty tones.

"Not quite human. Not quite machine. The Velvet Sundown lives somewhere in between." So read the social media posts that finally admitted the band was the work of AI, though the group argued that they were part of "a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction." "This isn't a trick — it's a mirror," the post continued. "An ongoing artistic precaution designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the future of music itself in the age of AI."

But the critics weren't convinced. Indeed, it appeared that the band had simply hoodwinked listeners. In many cases, listeners would have stumbled across the music of the Velvet Sundown on playlists generated by Spotify or Apple Music — neither of which made steps to flag the artist account as AI — and assumed it was the work of an actual new rock group. And though potentially convincing, AI-generated rock music such as the Velvet Sundown remains far duller than the real thing, according to the experts. Music critic Anthony Fantano, who bills himself as "the internet's busiest music nerd," described the 70s-adjacent music of Velvet Sundown on his YouTube channel as "vague, rip-off crap," adding, "It's like I'm listening to a compilation of the most boring bands of that time period." Whether the Velvet Sundown will continue to reach a sizeable listenership or whether musicians will protest the developments by pulling their music from streaming platforms now the truth is out is unclear.