The Velvet Sundown is an AI band after all, with its music created on Suno, confesses a spokespersonA spokesperson for indie rock ‘band’ The Velvet Sundown now admits that it’s not a real band and that all of its music is made with Suno, despite previously denying any use of generative AI.
The fictional group went viral in June 2025, with over 470,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. However, pretty much everyone had their suspicions that the band was fake after listening to the music and viewing the very AI-styled cover art and press photos.
Still, the band’s X account insisted on 29 June that The Velvet Sundown is not AI-generated in any capacity. Today, though, a “pseudonymous band spokesperson and ‘adjunct’ member Andrew Frelon” admits to Rolling Stone that: “It’s marketing. It’s trolling. People before, they didn’t care about what we did, and now suddenly, we’re talking to Rolling Stone, so it’s like, ‘is that wrong?’”
In the phone conversation with Rolling Stone, Frelon goes on to explain that the generative AI music platform Suno was leveraged to make some of the music. “I haven’t admitted that to anyone else,” Frelon said, adding, “I don’t want to say which [songs]” are Suno-generated. RS reports that Frelon also used Suno’s Persona feature, which producer Timbaland is using to create his AI artist TaTa.

Earlier this week, The Velvet Sundown refuted claims from online users, YouTubers and journalists that it’s fake and AI-generated. On its X account, it said that it’s “absolutely crazy that so-called ‘journalists’ keep pushing the lazy, baseless theory that the Velvet Sundown is ‘AI-generated’ with zero evidence.… This is not a joke. This is our music, written in long, sweaty nights in a cramped bungalow in California with real instruments, real minds and real soul.”
So, how did The Velvet Sundown get so big on Spotify? Even Frelon isn’t so sure. “I’m not running the Spotify backend stuff, so I can’t super speak to exactly how that happened,” he said to Rolling Stone. “I know we got on some playlists that just have like tons of followers, and it seems to have spiralled from there.”
Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek said in 2023 that the platform will not ban AI music — and it seems to be keeping that promise. Deezer, meanwhile, told TechRadar that it’s flagged The Velvet Sundown’s albums as AI-generated content together with the message: “Some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence.”
The Velvet Sundown reportedly have an album coming out in a couple of weeks titled Paper Sun Rebellion, which will be their third album in two months. Will it receive the same attention as their previous…um…hits, such as Dust On The Wind? Either way, the band’s spokesperson encourages listeners to have an open mind.
“I respect that people have really strong emotions about this,” says Frelon. “But I think it’s important that we allow artists to experiment with new technologies and new tools,  try things out, and not freak out at people just because they’re using a program or not using a program. People have this idea that you have to please everybody and you have to follow the rules. And that’s not how music and culture progress. Music and culture progressed by people doing weird experiments and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. And that’s kind of the spirit that we’re [embracing].” 
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