This cool quartet's moody music and introspective lyrics were a deliberate attempt to stray from the mainstream: "I founded the band party because the music scene was so conservative," explains stunning frontmand Stephan Jenkins. "We didn't fin in." Well, Stephan and his bandmates - Brad Hargreaves, Arion Salazar and Kevin Cadogan - wound up shaking up the world and getting major success in return for their double-platinum-plus self-titled debut. The guys got to open for U2 and the Rolling Stone, then hit the read as headliners. Right now, they're in the planning stages of their second album, due out later this year.

Teen January 1999