The Downtown Fiction

Like My Favorite Highway and Friday Night Boys, the Downtown Fiction are a melodic emo pop band hailing from the suburban outskirts of Washington, D.C. Formed during the summer of 2008 in Fairfax, Virginia, the band originally consisted of high-school students Cameron Leahy on guitar and vocals and Eric Jones on drums. Classmate David Pavluk joined several months later, handling bass duties and backup vocals. A healthy following on MySpace helped the boys land a contract with Photo Finish Records in 2009, and the band spent the latter half of that year working on new music. By early 2010, they'd made their digital debut with Best I Never Had, an introductory EP that helped them land several summer tours, including the Bamboozle Road Show and the Vans Warped Tour. A second release, The Double EP, arrived later that year, followed in 2011 by the full-length Let's Be Animals. Near the end of the year, Jones left the band and was replaced by Kyle Rogers, while tour guitarist Wes Dimond became an official bandmember. The group toured heavily during 2012 and the next year switched labels, jumping to Fearless. They spent the summer of 2013 writing and recording new songs, some 50 in all, before hitting the studio with Paramore producer Carlos de la Garza and whittling their list of songs down to the best 11 tracks. Recorded in a mere 30 days, Losers & Kings was released in early summer of 2014.