Kyd The Band

The music of Northern California-bred Kyd the Band (real name Devin Guisande) is an ideal soundtrack to finding your place in an often-chaotic world, and radiates a hard-won positivity that inspires anyone to live more boldly. Born into a family in the Pentecostal Church, Devin got his start playing drums. At age 16 he co-founded a band with his brother Kyle and began writing songs of his own, relying entirely on instinct rather than mining influence from other artists (“I didn’t know who Kanye West was till I was 18,” notes Guisande, who couldn't watch movies or listen to secular music). Over the next two years, Guisande experienced a life-changing transformation as he left the church he was raised in and moved away from home heading to Los Angeles.

While his nonstop hustle scored him meetings with a number of industry heavyweights, he felt disillusioned by the scene and decamped to Nashville. When his brother followed him soon after, the two resumed the musical partnership they formed as teenagers. Too broke to afford beds, the siblings shared an apartment and slept on the floor, working full-time jobs all day and spending every night writing songs. After penning tracks for other artists (acts as eclectic as hip-hop legends Bone Thugs-N-Harmony to Michigan rapper NF to German DJ Robin Schulz) and a series of false starts the two began releasing music under the name Kyd the Band and embarked on their first-ever tour. Although Kyle exited in late 2017, Devin continued on.