Dave Bayley, Ed Irwin-Singer (bass), Drew MacFarlane (guitar) and Joe Seaward (drums) released their first album, Zaba, in 2014, on Paul Epworth’s Wolf Tone label. It was a modest debut (“We thought we’d go back to our jobs,” Bayley says) until the stealthily addictive Gooey became a platinum-certified viral streaming hit. They have since notched up over two billion streams, appeared on James Corden and Jimmy Kimmel, and toured the world to strikingly diverse audiences, from Glastonbury to Primavera and Red Rocks to Coachella. Bayley figured that most bands’ second albums are informed by life on the road, for better or worse, so instead of writing about himself, why not tell the stories of some of the fascinating people they met? Each song on 2016’s Mercury-shortlisted How to Be a Human Being explore a different character until the overwhelming final track, Agnes, when Bayley turned the camera on himself. Around the same time, Bayley started writing and producing for other artists, including Joey Bada$$, Flume, 6lack, Wale, Khalid and, on last year’s Tokyo Drifting, Denzel Curry. Third album Dreamland was recorded in London in 2019, produced by Bayley and mixed by David Wrench, Manny Maroquin and MixedbyAli. Glass Animals’ most enthralling album to date, it’s a pop record of rare scope, vision and emotional depth.