History of The Naked and Famous - By Luke and Danny

The lineup: David Beadle, Thom Powers, Aaron Short, Jesse Wood, Alisa Xayalith. 
  
Background: The Naked and Famous have  slipped into the market, since they committed commercial hara-kiri earlier this year. The five-piece from New Zealand, began as an electro duo in 2008 after the two members, Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith, met at music school. They have taken the sound indie rock and turned it into a their own style of electric rock. That's have found a gap in the market and are filling it with a commercialised version of a successful, cool American band's most popular tracks.

The New Zealand post-punk revival band from Auckland formed in 2008 when Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith recorded two EPs with engineer Aaron Short, a fellow student at Auckland's MAINZ music college. The EPs were subsequently released on a local independent label and Powers and Xayalith began performing live with Ben Knapp (bass) and Jordan Clark (drums).
In 2009, the group recorded the single "All of This". Aaron Short became a performing member of the group and Jesse Wood (drums) and David Beadle (bass) joined the band as full-time members.

The band were involved in NME's rising stars for 2011 and did an interview. There is a clip from that interview below.

 The group then set about recording the single "Young Blood" and their debut album, recording mostly at home and at Auckland studio, The Lab. "Young Blood" debuted on the New Zealand chart at number one on 14 June 2010 – the first New Zealand artist in three years to do so. The Naked and Famous released their debut studio album, Passive Me, Aggressive You, on 6 September 2010 on their own label, Somewhat Damaged. The album was produced by Thom Powers and Aaron Short and mixed by Billy Bush.

Their most notorious song "Young Blood" (what we are using for our music video) was used in a promo for the television series Property Brothers, as well as  in season 4 episode 14 of Gossip Girl, and in the season 5 episode 6 Promo of the episode Alo from Skins - Skins being a drama about young people therefore the song fits perfectly with this genre. It was also featured in the third episode of MTV's Awkward (also about high school teenagers in the US and normal day to day teenage life). The song was also used in the film 'Prom' and in its trailer. 


The song has been also featured in a Canon EOS 600D TV advert which has been broadcasted worldwide.  The song is also used in the 2012 renaissance of the SSX snowboarding series of video games, and was used prominently in multiple trailers leading up to the release of the game. The song was also used in trailers for the 2012 horror film The Cabin in the Woods. 





When looking at this research, it suggests that when it has been used it has been for the purpose of providing an exciting and creative upbeat. It is one of those songs which you would always hear and recognize but not necessarily know the band as the Naked and Famous are not exactly massive on the global scale.




The band also supports the charity 'invisible children' and their song Young Blood optimizes the charity's motives as its aim is to protect children in Africa from being subjected to horrors such as human trafficking and kidnap. Other bands such as Bloc Party and Mumford and Sons have also supported the campaign of Making Kony famous.