At the ripe old age of 16, Manchester native Jake Roche was not one to find himself worrying over matters such as high school. Rather, he wanted to focus on changing the world through his true passions: singing and music. As Roche started to look for bandmates, he stumbled upon Danny Wilkin, a keyboardist and bassist who had previously dropped out of college to pursue music as well, forming a bond between the eventual bandmates almost instantaneously. The two spent a good amount of time on their own, living in Wilkin’s parents’ backyard at one point just to pay the bills. After three years of refining their sound together, the two came into contact with Charley Bagnall, a guitarist from Essex, UK, who wanted to join in on the pair’s ongoing adventure, having recently resigned from his previous pop-punk band ‘Rio’. Finally, to complete their outfit, drummer Lewi Morgan came into the picture, and Rixton was finally a reality.

Together, the four penned their first song, “Speakerphone,” which finally captured the group’s harmonic and unique sound, something for which they had been striving for four long years.

“We knew what we wanted–huge pop songs with soul,” Roche says.

This was definitely accomplished on the band’s first album, Let the Road, released on March 3rd of this year, and hitting number one in the UK within the last month. With popular songs such as “Me and My Broken Heart” playing on the radio worldwide, it is no surprise that Rixton is now headlining with Ariana Grande in her Honeymoon Tour throughout the month of April in the US.

This is not their only stadium experience; Rixton has also opened for artists such as Justin Bieber, in front of thousands of fans.

“We were used to standing on stage and seeing our parents,” Wilkin states, “Suddenly, we were walking out in front of 20 thousand screaming girls.”

Even though the band has only been on American radio for less than three months, their unique group harmony approach definitely propels them into a different category than the archetypal boy band. This refreshing turn certainly gives them the potential to be in the limelight longer than the usual one-hit-wonders.