Without the benefit of a culturally ubiquitous hit or a massive viral moment, indie pop/alternative rock/acoustic anomaly LANY has nonetheless logged over four billion cumulative streams and sold over a half million concert tickets sold across 37 countries.

Despite not necessarily being household names, the duo currently comprised of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Paul Klein and drummer/percussionist/sample man Jake Goss has one of the most dedicated fan bases today, who are capable of screaming literally every word to any song with equal fervor.

In return, the guys are not only unforgettably infectious, but incredibly relatable throughout both club bangers and stripped down ballads, which are all coming to the spacious Huntington Bank Pavilion At Northerly Island on Sunday, August 7 after selling out basically every club in the city, in addition to The Forum and Radio City Music Hall.

As rehearsals for the “Summer Forever” Tour got underway, Chicago Concert Reviews and Klein jumped on Zoom to try to put the phenomenon into words, and in the process, discovered some candid revelations about growing up in the smallest of towns but gleaning a global perspective, along with becoming a fairly big band that’s yet to be fully discovered.

What is the make-up of this show you’re bringing to Chicago?

Paul Klein: It’s gonna be a new show entirely. It was kind of a shame last time we played Chicago. I didn’t have a voice, but the crowd was so amazing and understanding, we got through it, which I thought was awesome. We love Chicago and played there a lot. We’re excited to come back. We want to give the people a new experience… The stage design is completely different. The production will be completely different. We’ll all be outside under the stars and I think that will be really cool.

We’re working in songs from every album and almost every EP. We wanted to give the “day ones” a little moment in the show, and then we’re also, for the first time ever, gonna be playing an unreleased song called “Congrats” that will be on our next album. We’ve put these arrangements together where some songs, we’re just playing the back half. We’re doing some medleys as far as like grouping three songs together. It’s something that we’ve never done, but we’re really excited. We’ve played, I think at this point, like a thousand or more shows, so it’s great to switch it up. Obviously, we have to be cognizant of our audience. We don’t want to just play all the old stuff and we don’t want to play just all the new stuff. We’re trying to please everyone, even though my mom let me know at a very young age that was impossible to do (laughs).

There are a lot of different flavors to LANY, from pop to alternative and more acoustic. Can you give us an overview of the different styles that you’ve approached over the years and where you’re at currently?

Klein: I think in the beginning, we were really good at using whatever we had, and at that time, it was a Dell computer and a bedroom. [We had a] recording software program called Cubase that not very many people use and we had two synthesizers, a drum pad and some iPhones. We got all of our synth sounds from either synthesizers or I played a lot synths on my iPhone that we would just plug in through an iPhone jack, like a headphone jack, and we would record that in. I think our sound back then was very minimal. It felt perfectly untouched, almost like perfectly unfinished really. We put out that [self-titled] debut album [in 2017] and we started getting in rooms that were a lot bigger than we ever really dreamed of being in and it became apparent that we could maybe take this thing further than we thought, but we would need to get better sound recordings.

So we reached out to a guy named Mike Crossey, who’s worked with the Arctic Monkeys, Twenty One Pilots and The 1975. He came to our show and he described LANY as an Italian dish. “There’s like four or five ingredients on the plate. We need to make sure these ingredients are the best they’ve ever been and the best you can get.” And that’s when we made “Malibu Nights” [in 2018], which was a huge moment for us as a band. Then we went and toured that album around the world.

I’m from Oklahoma and Jake is from Arkansas. We’re from very middle of the road, middle class, middle of nowhere kind of backgrounds and families, but everyone thinks we’re like this Los Angeles pop band or indie pop from the West Coast. We made an album called “Mama’s Boy,” which was basically taking our fans back home with us, opening up and being incredible vulnerable about our upbringings, our doubts, struggles with faith, just all the things you grow up with in the South and in the Midwest. It had a much more organic, acoustic tone to it and that was awesome, but we released that in October 2020 and never got to tour it because of the pandemic. We were faced with two options after putting that out.

We could sit on the couch and wait for the world to open back up or we could go make another album and wait for the world to open back up, so that’s what we did with “gg bb xx” [in 2021]. I only wanted to do it if it was gonna be fun. That was the only requirement. We weren’t gonna do anything that was not fun, especially in that time of the world when everything was so miserable and depressing. I wanted it to be slick, computer, laptop pop, just a stark juxtaposing and contrast to “Mama’s Boy.” You can hear those are real slick, poppy, fun, energetic, upbeat songs. There’s still a lot of meaning and depth to them, but ultimately, I didn’t want to write a bunch of sad songs during the current sad state of the world, so that’s where we’re at now.

We have been working on our fifth album and I think it’s probably gonna be our best body of work. We’re channeling a lot of our favorite bands that we’ve always dreamt of and inspired to be like…U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Coldplay, even bands like Goo Goo Dolls and Smashing Pumpkins. I know that’s a wide array, but we’re taking our favorite elements of those bands and bringing them together. I do think you’re gonna hear all of those on our next album.

How has your upbringing shaped your sounds and life? And how has your perspective evolved throughout touring the entire world?

Klein: That’s a humongous question that I think I answer weekly in therapy, but I can try to give you an answer. I think, ultimately, I’m at a stage in my life where I can see the good and the bad in almost everything. A lot of the good I take, and a lot of the bad is what pushed me to change and be who I am today. I’m so thankful for my upbringing, but at the same time, I hated so much about how I grew up that it pushed me to get out and now I’m really glad that I did. I think my worldview has gotten endlessly larger. When you grow up in Oklahoma in a small town, not very many people get out and not very many people even know what they’re missing. I’m so blessed and thankful I was able to get out, see the world, actually get a chance at pursuing my dreams and evolving as a human, just finding myself artistically and personally.

My mom threw me in piano lessons at the age of five. I didn’t really have a choice, but I’m glad that happened. I studied classical piano for 13 years and started studying jazz when I turned 12. I used to play at my granny’s nursing home growing up, so that’s my musical history, but I’m so glad I discovered John Mayer, the Chili Peppers and all these other bands. That really influenced me growing up. [Coldplay’s] Chris Martin was the first person who made piano cool to me. It was something I never talked about. I was almost ashamed of it and embarrassed. I would go compete in classical music competitions on the weekend when my friends were at pool parties, kissing girls, doing cool s—- and I was just not doing any of that stuff.

Maybe so, but to quote your lyrics, “have you heard they’re playin’ LANY on the radio?”

Klein: That’s right, yeah, totally man! We’ve worked really hard. I think that’s also really inspiring for our fans and people who care about the band. Honestly, if we can do it, anybody can do it. We’re not from wealth, well-connected families or even glamorous cities for that matter.

Even if you’re not technically on the actual radio quite yet, your streaming numbers and ticket sales speak for themselves. How are people finding out about LANY and what are the common points of connection? At the Aragon Ballroom show, everybody seemed to sing along to every single song equally as loud and the reaction was unbelievable.

Klein: I appreciate you saying that. I think, in different words, you basically said what I believe to be true. We’re like the biggest band you’ve never heard about and the way we’ve gotten here is from a very slow, organic growth. Often times, that can be very frustrating because we haven’t had a viral moment. We haven’t had a smash hit song, but like seven or eight songs that are really big that I think a lot of people have heard, which is cool cause our catalogue is deep and it’s real. We haven’t had a bon-a-fide hit per se, but I think the way people know about our band is I could tell you almost every show we’ve played in Chicago alone. We started at Schubas, we moved it up to the House Of Blues, then we did the Metro and then we did two nights at the House Of Blues. Then we did a livestream in 2018 [at the Riviera Theatre]. We’ve played Chicago so many times and we don’t skip any rooms. That’s been our approach in every city. We go play, everyone comes to the show, and then the next time they come, they bring a friend, so we play to twice as many people. The next time we come, they bring a friend and it’s three times as many people. I think that’s how we’ve grown, through what I would love to believe is just continued excellence and trying to put out great art and music. At the end of the day, that’s all we can really control and that’s all we really care about. The rest is up to the cosmos and the universe.

Your music is so life-affirming and I feel like a lot of the comments I read online talk about how you’ve literally saved someone through a difficult moment. What are a few of the standouts you’ve seen or heard?

Klein: I think it’s what you said, when people tell me that the music saved their lives, or saved them from a really dark place, or they wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for LANY. I think those are really weighty compliments that sometimes I don’t even know how to process or even accept. But I am so thankful that, for whatever reason, I was put in a position in their life to help them because I’ve been in places in my life where I need help, I need a voice, I need a friend, I need something or someone to lean on. For some people, that’s been our music and it’s been our songs. I don’t take that lightly. I know it’s really cool to act like you don’t give a f— about anything or anyone and that seems to work for everyone. But I do give a f— and I do care. I don’t take this lightly. Maybe we’d be cooler, bigger or more popular if I acted like more nonchalant about it, but I’ve got people who are claiming to still alive because of the songs we make. It’s hard for me to not take that seriously and want to continue that journey.

LANY feels real and genuine to so many, but what does LANY feel like to you?

Klein: It feels real. Some days it feels like a job. Some days it feels overwhelming, stressful and scary. Some days it feels f— awesome and inspiring. I don’t want to be dishonest, but it has its ups and down, just like everything does in life. At the end of the day, it’s clear to me that this is my sole purpose. My main purpose in life is to give people songs, and articulate human emotions in a way that’s helpful, reflective and therapeutic. I want to continue to do that, and be a good steward of that responsibility and that gift. We’ll see how long we can do it for. We’ll see how long people care and we’ll go on 110 percent until they don’t I guess (laughs).

If you had to pinpoint a defining moment in your life with LANY, what would that be?

Klein: Honestly, we played this one show in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to one person in 2015. We were the opening act for this band called Twin Shadow. We were playing five songs before that band went on and there was one person in the room. I just remember, at that time, it was me, Jake and [former keyboardist] Les [Priest], and we played that show as if we were playing Madison Square Garden. I was standing on the kick drum with my shirt off singing the song “Made In Hollywood” for one person. I actually think that was a very defining moment for all of us because it was an opportunity. It was a chance where we could’ve hung our heads, been negative about the situation and been really sad about it or really jerks about it, but instead, we were just like, “man, we’re so glad there’s one person there.” I think as long as there’s one person, we’ll still keep trying to do this!

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LANY performs at Huntington Bank Pavilion At Northerly Island on Sunday, August 7. For additional details, visit ThisIsLANY.com and LiveNation.com.