(Thomas’ real surname is Croquet, and you’ll agree that it’s no competition for “Mars.”) This incubated an “us vs. They started playing together as teenagers, when they had scant musical ability but already a surfeit of taste and attitude - very quickly, they were picking stage names to sound cooler. The members of Phoenix - singer Thomas Mars, guitarists (and brothers) Laurent Brancowitz and Christian Mazzalai, and bassist/keyboardist Deck D’arcy - met as boys growing up in genteel and stately Versailles, where they bonded over their love of artists like Pixies and the Sex Pistols, which made them outsiders in a city built around the idea of venerating the very distant past. (Yes, that Louvre, but more on that in a moment.) Just as impressive as those seven albums across 25 years and where they’ve chosen to make them is how Phoenix have done it as a harmonious four-man unit who’ve suffered no real discord, no fracturing crises. Now, they’re back with Alpha Zulu, their first album in five years, which was recorded at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, inside the Louvre.

Wolfgang amadeus phoenix album art