KALEO

Julius Son, David Antonsson Crivello, and Danny Jones all attended elementary school in the small town of Mosfellsbaer. They began playing together at the age of 17, adding guitarist Rubin Pollock to the mix in 2012. Kaleo made its first major public appearance was at Iceland Airwaves Music Festival in November of that year.

Julius Son told Altwire about the band's early days: "We are all from a small town in Iceland called Mosfellsbær in Iceland which is a suburb in the capital Reykjavik. It's a small town of about 9000 people and we were all together in middle school and that's kind of where we got started. Me, David and Danny had classes together. We got into playing cover gigs and developed as a band over the years. Kaleo formed about three years ago when Rubin Pollock joined the band and played guitar. That's when we started to focus on original material."

Kaleo's breakthrough came in the spring of 2013 when their cover of the traditional Icelandic ballad "Vor í Vaglaskógi" during a live radio show was videotaped and posted to YouTube, where it quickly went viral. The band recorded a studio version a few months later, which got heavy rotation on Icelandic state broadcaster RÚV's radio station Rás 2.