Gotye

Gotye is one man: Wally De Backer, born in Belgium, raised in Australia, working mostly alone. He produces himself and plays most of what you hear, which is the through-line across all three Gotye records. Boardface arrived in 2003, Like Drawing Blood in 2006, and then Making Mirrors in 2011, the one that changed everything around him. He built that third album not in a studio but in a barn on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, surrounded by his own instruments and a habit of starting songs from found sounds rather than a blank page.

That working method, sampler first, voice later, is the key to him. He is a collagist who happens to sing, assembling records out of fragments until they cohere into something that sounds like nobody else.

Then came the part most artists would kill for, and he treated it as a reason to leave. After Making Mirrors made him globally famous, he set the Gotye name aside. He turned back toward The Basics, the band he plays in, and toward his label Spirit Level, choosing the smaller room on purpose. The fame was the exit, not the destination. Knowing that changes how every Gotye song lands.