Paul Klein

Paul Klein is the frontman of the US alternative rock band LANY. They are from Los Angeles and LANY is an acronym for “Los Angeles New York”. The band consists of Klein on lead vocals, piano, keyboards and guitar; Charles Leslie “Les” Priest on keyboards, synthesizers, guitar and backing vocals; and Jake Clifford Goss on drums, percussion and sampling pad. Klein grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and went to university in Nashville to study “music and music business.” Klein met future LANY collaborators Les Priest and Jake Goss there, but first he moved to Los Angeles, where he tried — and failed — to launch a solo career.

In 2014, he returned to Nashville and mixed his “singer-songwriter stuff” with Goss and Priest’s electronic productions. They posted their first songs to Soundcloud anonymously, and the response was unexpected. “Six days later, we were getting emails from record labels,” Klein remembers. They signed to Universal in 2015 after touring with Tove Styrke, Troye Sivan, and Halsey, and began work on their debut album, which took 15 months due to their busy schedule. The LANY LP has a polished pop sound with uniformly sad lyrics.

The band has two top 40 albums under their belt, LANY (2017) and Malibu Nights (2018), and is signed to Polydor and Interscope. They’ve also released a slew of singles, with the RIAA-certified “ILYSB” (2015), Julia Michaels’ collaboration “Okay” (2019), and “Mean It” (2019) with Lauv among the most successful. Mama’s Kid, their third studio album, was released in 2020. They released a deluxe edition of Mama’s Boy in 2021.