A rising rock band amassed over 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify before fans discovered the group wasn’t real.

The Velvet Sundown, a retro-inspired act evoking the sound of the ’60s and ’70s, reached the milestone less than a month after releasing their debut album Floating on Echoes on June 5. The project’s breakout track, “Dust on the Wind,” has been streamed more than 1.2 million times and topped Spotify’s “Viral 50” chart in Sweden.

However, just as buzz around the band intensified, it was revealed that The Velvet Sundown is an entirely artificial creation — from the music and lyrics to the band members’ images and voices.

According to a statement on their Spotify profile and social media, the group is a “synthetic music project” created with human oversight but powered by AI tools used for composition, vocals, visuals, and storytelling.

“This isn’t a trick — it’s a mirror,” the bio reads. “An ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity and the future of music itself in the age of AI.”

The project emphasizes that all characters and content are original, AI-generated works, with no intentional connection to real individuals or events.

Until the announcement, fans had believed the quartet was human, supported by promotional images showing the band posed in vintage style.

The revelation comes just days before the scheduled release of their second album, Paper Sun Rebellion, arriving July 14 with 13 new tracks.

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