Hive Five: Our Daily Listicle of Musical Musings

In May 2011, Foxygen's Sam France and Jonathan Rado ventured to the Mercury Lounge in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to watch Richard Swift perform. After the performance, they met Swift and handed him a copy of their homemade album, Take the Kids Off Broadway, which they had mixed and burned that same night. As the story goes, Swift liked the album so much that he recorded with Foxygen eight months later. “We just wanted him to hear the record,” Rado says. “We weren’t really trying to do anything. We just wanted to give him the album because we love him.” Foxygen’s charming new album, We Are The 21^st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, is the result of that recording session. Here are Foxygen’s five greatest influences, told to Hive by the band itself.

1. Jesus Christ

Rado: “Because, you know, he’s our Lord and Savior.”

2. God and Richard Swift

France: “Richard Swift, because he is God to us.”

3. The Zombies

Rado: “The Zombies are just a great band who wrote amazing songs, and did really cool things on record.”

4. Jonathan Rado

France: “Rado’s my influence because our band is really about the music we listen to, together or apart. It’s all about how we filter it through our lives and into our songs.”

Rado: “Yeah, I’m pretty alright.”

5. Foxygen’s live band

Rado: “Our band members are pretty amazing people, and they’re inspiring because it’s really nice having your friends around all the time, ya know?”

 We Are the 21^st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic is out January 22 on Jagjaguwar.