The Neighbourhood

The Neighbourhood (The NBHD) are an American alternative rock band formed in Newbury Park, California in August 2011: Jesse Rutherford (vocals), Zach Abels and Jeremy Freedman (guitars), Mikey Margott (bass) and Brandon Fried (drums). “Sweater Weather”, written on a teenage afternoon at Abels’ mother’s house, spent 11 non-consecutive weeks at #1 on Alternative Airplay, is RIAA Diamond-certified (listed at 16x Platinum), and has passed 4.7 billion Spotify streams inside a catalog total around 19.4 billion, with roughly 45 million monthly listeners. They are, functionally, the godfather act of the dark-pop generation this wiki documents, and after a four-year hiatus they returned in 2025 on Warner Records with (((((ultraSOUND))))) and a 2026 world tour.

Formation

Rutherford, a Thousand Oaks-born former child actor (commercials, small roles in Life or Something Like It and Ted Bundy, a Star Trek: Enterprise episode) who impersonated NSYNC and Elvis in talent shows and cut a 17-track hip-hop mixtape (Truth Hurts, Truth Heals, 2011) before the band, connected with Ventura County players Abels, Freedman, Margott and original drummer Bryan Sammis in 2011. Abels, Freedman and Margott were already bandmates before Rutherford and Sammis joined; Sammis, the eldest (22 at the 2013 debut, to Rutherford’s 21), met Rutherford through the local Hollywood and Ventura County band scene and dropped out of college with one semester left to join full-time. The concept was genre-blending from day one, atmospheric indie rock, electronica and hip-hop beats under melodic, R&B-influenced vocals; Rutherford has traced his own compass to a single realization: “And then once hip-hop entered my view it was like, ‘Oh, OK, well that’s what this is.’”

The band originally used the standard American spelling, “The Neighborhood,” and switched to the British spelling on the advice of their manager, specifically to distinguish themselves from another band already using the American spelling, a branding decision that carried all the way into the song titles, which consistently use British spelling. Original drummer Sammis defined the mission for his grandmother better than any critic since: “dark pop music; pop music that wasn’t all sunshine and butterflies.” He left in January 2014 (recording after as Olivver the Kid); Brandon Fried replaced him.

Sweater Weather

Abels: “One day Jesse was at my house and I was playing guitar. And he said, ‘Hey that’s pretty cool, let me record that.’ And it just so happened to be ‘Sweater Weather.’” Abels was a teenager at his mother’s house, shortly before graduating high school; by the band’s later telling, he “used to play that riff endlessly” until Rutherford recorded it and built the beat around it, and “aside from some melodic tweaks to the first verse, the entire song was already in place.” Rutherford’s hindsight: “I think it might’ve been the best song we’d ever written, but I didn’t think it was going to be the best song we’d ever write. It was kind of like getting a Platinum record, like a little tap on the butt.”

The song arrived as an early single in 2012 alongside “Female Robbery,” ahead of the self-released debut EP I’m Sorry... (May 7, 2012, a free download produced by Justyn Pilbrow) and the second EP Thank You, (December 2012). The debut album I Love You. premiered via Rolling Stone on April 16, 2013 and debuted at No. 39 on the Billboard 200 on roughly 9,000 first-week units (it is now 2x Platinum). The black-and-white “Sweater Weather” video, directed by Zack Sekuler and Daniel Iglesias Jr., dropped March 5, 2013; the band played Coachella that April, performed the song on Kimmel on June 27, 2013, and toured as direct support for Imagine Dragons. “Sweater Weather” hit #1 Alternative in June 2013 and #14 on the Hot 100, with a run Billboard later ranked the 15th-most successful in Alternative Airplay’s 35-year history.

A decade on came the RIAA Diamond certification (April 2023), the dedicated award for 10 million equivalent units: at the time one of only about 106 songs to reach that tier in the RIAA’s 65-year certification history, and one of 27 songs certified Diamond in 2023. The RIAA’s own singles table lists the song at 16x Platinum (16 million units); the two labels are consistent, since 16x Platinum sits well past the 10-million Diamond threshold, but the terminology varies by source and date. The milestone prompted Abels: “Reaching such a significant milestone is hard to comprehend... it’s really challenging to absorb and accept it as real.” It was timed to the I Love You. 10th-anniversary campaign, which included commemorative vinyl via Columbia/Legacy and a “Chopped Not Slopped” remix by Houston’s OG Ron C, first released a decade earlier through DatPiff. By 2023 Variety counted 2.1 billion Spotify streams and 1.7 billion YouTube views; by mid-2026 the Spotify figure alone passed 4.7 billion. Sync history piled up from the start: James Franco chose it for a 7 For All Mankind commercial, it separately soundtracked advertising for the Playboy app, and the catalog reached film and games too: “Honest” on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 soundtrack, “Yellow Box” on Death Stranding: Timefall.

The black-and-white rule

“We wrote some songs. We had a band name. We asked ourselves, ‘What else do cool bands have? A theme.’... We used black and white rather than using our faces or our names.” The discipline was total: black-and-white videos and artwork, a mixtape literally titled #000000 & #FFFFFF (hosted by DJ Drama, with YG, Danny Brown, French Montana, Dej Loaf and G-Eazy), a demand to be photographed only in monochrome at Coachella 2013 (which the LA Times reportedly called “silly” at the time), and turned-down television: “We pissed off our label by not wanting to do Jay Leno or Letterman because they would only do it in color... But Letterman came back a week later and said we could do it. And it turned out really fucking awesome.” Rutherford compared unauthorized color photos to shooting KISS without makeup: “It almost feels like they’re trying to slight us.” Asked about the theme one time too many, the band’s answer was its own manifesto: “We’ve answered this question like a gazillion times... It’s kind of our DNA.” Abels owned the cost: “We’ve done things on our own that have, quote-unquote, hurt our career.” The one deliberate rule-break before Chip Chrome was sly: the Hard to Imagine... Ever Changing compilation reproduced the self-titled album’s black-and-white cover image in color, a visual pun on the title.

The eras

Wiped Out! (October 30, 2015, Billboard 200 #13, RIAA Gold) carried “Daddy Issues” (now 5x Platinum, around 2.15 billion streams) and “The Beach,” born from a riff Abels played in soundchecks for a year and a half: “we diddled with it. It was a while before it became a whole song” (Rutherford). Of the album’s assembly: “Every song has a reason to be on there... Opinions were stirred round the pot to find the right recipe.”

The self-titled album (March 9, 2018, Platinum) arrived through a flurry of EPs (Hard, September 2017, Billboard 200 #183; To Imagine, January 2018; Ever Changing, September 2018, all later compiled with the album as Hard to Imagine the Neighbourhood Ever Changing, US Rock #42) and a return to Coachella, where Abels noted the festival itself had shifted around them: the Stone Roses, Phoenix and the Chili Peppers headlined their 2013 debut; the Weeknd, Beyoncé and Eminem headlined 2018, the pop-facing world their genre-crossing had anticipated. Rutherford answered the box-drawers directly: “If you just looked up where we were from and you looked at what we looked like, it’d be very easy to assume a lot of things about us. Some of those things might even be true. But I don’t think we agree with a lot of the boxes that we’ve been put in.” Fried added the era’s thesis: “We are ever-changing... And we’re growing up and figuring it out.” The era also produced Rutherford’s driest press anecdote, on a harsh Pitchfork review: “I woke up to an email that was basically like, ‘Hey, you guys got reviewed on Pitchfork. Gave you a 4.7. Jesse, don’t read it.’”

Chip Chrome & the Mono-Tones (September 25, 2020, preceded by the Pretty Boy EP) was the great rule-break: Rutherford in silver body paint, spandex and a glittering grill as a Ziggy Stardust-inspired alter ego, first unveiled in the “Middle of Somewhere” video (2019): “I showed up in spandex and paint! Chip was a way for me to say, ‘I’m going to do me. You’re not going to stop me.’” The Bowie parallel was explicit: “Bowie was Ziggy, and Ziggy was a character very addicted to cocaine, and I would say that Chip is addicted to the internet”, written after nine months off the internet: “I asked myself what my opinion was about our music, our band, and our fans, and I realized I didn’t really know, and that scared the shit out of me.” The album missed the Billboard 200 but went Gold in Mexico, and its singles (“Stargazing,” “Pretty Boy”) both went Platinum. A stray non-album single, “Fallen Star” (2021), and two October 2021 shows at the Hollywood Bowl and Forest Hills Stadium closed the first act of the band’s life.

The TikTok second life

In late 2020, “Sweater Weather” and “Daddy Issues” went massively viral on TikTok, five million on-demand Spotify streams in November 2020 alone, pushing the song to No. 21 on the Billboard Global 200 in 2021, eight years after release, and introducing the band to the exact generation now making dark pop. NME devoted the debut episode of its “NME Explains” video franchise to the song on the strength of the resurgence, and the wave keeps recurring: German outlets documented another viral run in 2026, thirteen years after release. The lineage is explicit across this wiki: Ari Abdul bonded with her future producer over the band before “Babydoll” existed and chases the “2012-2015 Tumblr feeling” they defined; Nessa Barrett names them among her core influences, as her producer likened her atmosphere to theirs; Billie Eilish has said her first concert, a Neighbourhood show, “completely changed my life... I have essentially been trying to make my show feel the way that show felt.”

Hiatus, Fried & the comeback

The indefinite hiatus was announced February 22, 2022 via an Instagram Story, though the band’s own retrospective statement dates it to November 2021, “after 10 years together,” in the band’s own later words: “As we entered our early 30s, we were faced with life outside of the band for the first time in our adult lives. Breakups, family struggles, and personal challenges.” In November 2022, drummer Brandon Fried was removed after The Marías’ María Zardoya accused him of groping her; Fried admitted it, calling it “a reflection of who I become while under the influence,” and the band tied his exit to treatment: “it became evident that Brandon’s struggles with substance abuse needed immediate attention.”

The reunion assembled quietly from November 2024, with Fried back behind the kit in the studio, and went public in late August 2025 via a briefly posted, then deleted Instagram Story (“We are proud of Brandon, the changes he has made... Being in each other’s lives for over 20 years, when one of us is going through something, it impacts all of us”). Three singles, “OMG,” “Lovebomb” and “Private,” landed October 23, 2025 as the first new Neighbourhood original music in five years, and (((((ultraSOUND))))) followed November 14, 2025 on Warner Records, the band’s first new label deal in over a decade. It debuted at No. 155 on the Billboard 200, charted in Australia and Belgium, and was reviewed as “a quiet, moody comeback” bridging ’90s alt-rock grit with their Tumblr-era DNA, built partly on phone-recorded, GarageBand-loop production choices that echo Rutherford’s solo experiments. The Wourld Tour (2026) runs 30+ dates across North America, Europe, Australia, Asia and Latin America, kicking off March 28, 2026 in Austin and running through Madison Square Garden, TD Garden, The O2 and a Kia Forum hometown finale (initially October 9, later expanded with additional LA dates through early December), with Nessa Barrett supporting in Europe/UK and select US dates.

Jesse’s parallel lane

Rutherford’s solo career has run alongside the band from the start: the SoundCloud alias “the Factoury,” then & (November 10, 2017, eleven tracks, no features, accompanied by a 144-page photo book exploring gender fluidity), GARAGEB& (April 2019, made largely on the GarageBand phone app to cut screen dependency), an Atlantic signing in March 2023 (“It’s a true solo journey, and the music is just kind of soundtracking what I’m going through in my life... I just needed a moment for myself”) launched with the singles “Joker” and “Rainbow,” the mixtape &ONE (August 2023) and Wanted? (September 20, 2024, renamed from a planned self-titled days before release) under the rebrand Jesse®, a persona move that echoes the band’s own Chip Chrome experiment.

His relationship with Billie Eilish, from October 2022 to an amicable split by May 2023 (their representatives confirmed they “remain good friends”), generated its own enormous news cycle, including public criticism over their roughly ten-year age gap; she later called him “my homie forever” and one of her “favorite people.” Notably, the hiatus predated the relationship going public by eight months, and the band has never attributed the pause to it; their own statements point to burnout and “life outside of the band.” On the side lanes: Abels and Margott run the production duo MMC, and Abels carries 227 outside songwriting credits (per Dork’s database), including work with Seb Torgus.

Legacy & connections

Metacritic’s consensus around the self-titled album still holds as description: “moody, down-tempo rock with a little R&B tinge: think sad Weeknd with occasional synths.” Business stack: Columbia (2012-22, with Legacy Recordings still working the catalog through the hiatus, including the anniversary reissue and the Diamond announcement), Warner (2025-), management by Bad Habit, worldwide booking (except Africa) by Wasserman Music, whose listed agents include Ash Mowry, Marty Diamond, James Whitting and Olly Hodgson. For The Ring’s purposes the point is simpler: the monochrome discipline, the hip-hop-literate melancholy and the fan-first mystique are the blueprint half this wiki’s artists, from Artemas’s anti-persona to the B&W photography on these very pages, are still building on.

Audience & reception

The band’s fans took the nickname “hoodlums” early, and Sammis credited the band’s own hands-on design culture for it: “We do, specifically Jesse... do all of our own merchandise and graphic design... it just started catching on.” The community lives today on Reddit’s r/TheNeighbourhood and r/thenbhd, which tracked Jesse® solo releases, unreleased-song leaks and reunion speculation through the quiet years (one 2025 thread asked, plaintively, “Why nobody talks about the neighbourhood?” just before the reunion answered it). The streaming footprint stayed enormous throughout: roughly 45-47 million Spotify monthly listeners and 23.9 million followers as of mid-2026, with catalog streams around 19.3-19.4 billion, “Sweater Weather” at 4.7 billion-plus and “Daddy Issues” near 2.15 billion.

Certifications

Timeline

Frequently asked

Why is The Neighbourhood spelled the British way?

On their manager’s advice: the band started as “The Neighborhood” and switched to the British spelling to stand apart from another band already using the American one. The convention carried into their song titles, which use British spellings too.

Is “Sweater Weather” Diamond or 16x Platinum?

Both, and they don’t conflict. The RIAA’s Diamond award marks 10 million equivalent units, which the song was certified for in April 2023; the RIAA singles table lists it at 16x Platinum (16 million units), which is simply further past the same threshold. Different sources use whichever label fits their date of reporting.

Who is in The Neighbourhood?

Jesse Rutherford (vocals), Zach Abels and Jeremy Freedman (guitars), Mikey Margott (bass) and Brandon Fried (drums). Founding drummer Bryan Sammis left in January 2014 and records as Olivver the Kid; Fried replaced him, stepped away in 2022, and returned for the 2025 reunion.

Why did The Neighbourhood break up?

They never formally broke up: the band went on indefinite hiatus (dated to November 2021 in their own account, announced February 2022), citing burnout and “life outside of the band” as the members turned 30. They reunited in the studio in November 2024 and went public in August 2025.

What is Billie Eilish’s connection to The Neighbourhood?

Two-fold. Her first concert ever was a Neighbourhood show, which she says “completely changed my life” and still shapes how she builds her own shows. She also dated frontman Jesse Rutherford from October 2022 to May 2023; the band’s hiatus predated that relationship becoming public, and the band has never linked the two.

What is Chip Chrome?

Rutherford’s alter ego for the 2020 album Chip Chrome & the Mono-Tones: silver body paint, spandex and a glittering grill, modeled on Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, except where Ziggy’s addiction was cocaine, “Chip is addicted to the internet.”

Who opens the 2026 Wourld Tour?

Nessa Barrett is confirmed as support for the Europe/UK leg (August 24 to September 12) and select US arena dates (November 10 to December 4), a booking that pairs the scene’s godfathers with one of the artists they directly influenced.

Further reading

The generation downstream, all on this wiki: Nessa Barrett, who cites the band among her core influences and opens their 2026 tour · Ari Abdul, who bonded with her producer over the band and chases the Tumblr-era feeling they defined · Artemas, whose anti-persona instincts run on the same fan-first mystique.

Albums