For Joe Keery, Djo is No Longer a Best-Kept Secret

I was supposed to interview Joe Keery two years ago for MTV. We were going to hole up in the Chicago Athletic Association hotel before his Lollapalooza set in the city and shoot the shit about the local DIY scene that he came up in, about how fans of his music were only just recently beginning to discover that it’s him behind the songs. In July 2022, all eyes in the zeitgeist were affixed firmly on the long-awaited fourth season of Stranger Things, but Keery was about to release DECIDE—his second album under the moniker Djo—and play a then-unreleased song that would, two years later, become a mystifying TikTok phenomenon. But his flight coming into O’Hare was severely delayed and, because he was filming Finally Dawn in Rome the rest of the summer, we could never reschedule—until now.

Despite having not played a show since that Lollapalooza slot (which is fair, on account of the rigorous shooting blocks of Stranger Things and his recent roles in Fargo and Marmalade), Keery’s music career has taken an unprecedented turn that not even the glow of his 2019 debut album, Twenty Twenty, could have hinted at. Last month, the former pizza delivery boy and Chicago basement show dweller-turned-Netflix heartthrob and beloved White Boy of the Month alumnus’ song, “End of Beginning,” became the latest World Wide Web musical anomaly.

Fans have been clamoring on to Keery’s downbeat chorus, as he sings “When I’m back in Chicago I feel it / Another version of me, I was in it.” TikTok creators are using the track for Chicago edits or the “If I won the lottery” trend but, above all, they’re plastering it everywhere as they try to fathom the true identity of the man singing it. In turn, “End of Beginning” became a #1 hit on the Billboard’s TikTok Top 50, is currently #4 on the UK singles chart, reached #1 on Spotify charts in 19 countries, is up over 138 million streams (Djo has over 22 million monthly listeners now, too) and, briefly snuck into the Hot 100 at #35—an unprecedented run of accolades for a song that not only came out two years ago, but wasn’t even released as a single.

“End of Beginning” is the latest song to live a separate life online. We saw it in 2022 with Lord Huron’s “The Night We Met” and in 2023 with Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine,” but neither of those artists latched onto that momentum and seized it in any sort of engagement way (I can barely imagine Mitski owning a phone, let alone being on TikTok). Keery hasn’t taken that step either, at least not beyond posting an “I’ve been tokked” video he shot on the New York subway and a clip of him fiddling with scratch guitar takes for “End of Beginning” with his co-producer Adam Thein. But there’s a good chance that, once Stranger Things 5 concludes, Keery will take this new crop of listeners and parlay it into a national tour or festival run of some kind—though his focus is, at least for right now, on finishing the show’s last chapter and finding space to mess around with album #3 whenever he can.

“That’s something that I really want to do,” he says. “Obviously, the production for [Stranger Things] comes first. It’s really a priority of mine to give that my utmost attention, but the great part about doing this has been, in my downtime, I’ve been able to fill it in with music in the studio and recording. Once all the dust is settled from my time on Stranger Things, it’s definitely something that I would be interested in doing.”

In preparation for my Zoom call with Keery last week during his return to Los Angeles, I went mining through the back-end of my Google Docs archive and pulled up my sheet of questions I’d prepared for him two years ago. Near the end of my outline, I’d hoped to ask about the then-online craze surrounding his music—as users on TikTok were, at the time, sharing their reactions to finding out that Djo is Joe Keery (not totally unlike this recent trend), as the lyrics “Help, something’s wrong with me / Homesick for LA / In the summer of my life / That’s where we first met” from “Chateau (Feel Alright)” played loudly in each video.

“Chateau (Feel Alright)” alone has nearly 12,000 videos on the platform (and over 92 million Spotify streams), one of which that was posted in the summer of 2022 with “JOE KEERY IS DJO BRUH IVE BEEN LISTENING TO STEVE MOTHERFUCKIN HARRINGTON FOR THE PAST 2 YEARS WITHOUT KNOWING” in all caps across the screen. “It ended up being a really fun little marketing tool,” Keery says, now doing his first real round of press since “End of Beginning” first caught a spark earlier this year. “There’s an element of fun about that, I think, for people.”

Of course, the way Keery was able to maintain anonymity as Djo for so long is a two-part equation. For starters, in 2020 he deleted his personal Instagram page—only to re-emerge later that year with a new account dedicated to the project, completely severing any immediately obvious ties between him and his quasi-alter-ego. Secondly, Keery has never performed as Djo in street clothes. In all promotional materials and at every gig, he is decked out in some kind of farcical attire, sports a fake mustache and shreds onstage in a wig that painfully contrasts with his infamous hairstyle. At first, Keery had hoped that he could keep up that inconspicuousness for a while, but it was only a matter of time before everyone else caught on—but I don’t think anyone saw such a storm of interest come rolling in. However, part of his curated, low-profile character remains intact, however, as most fans have yet to discover a secret song he, Thein and Jake Hirshland wrote and recorded together and uploaded to streaming services under a non-Djo name.

Even with the popularity of “End of Beginning,” which now sits at over 1.4 million videos on TikTok, Keery’s purpose for such an intentional, performative invisibility stems from his desire to see people engage with the music from an exploratory place that, ultimately, is detached from the Netflix show that made him a household name. “I had a little pipe dream that it would be an Andy Kaufmann sort of thing where, if you know, you know. But then, I kind of figured that the word would get out,” Keery says. “But my main intention was that, if people could hear the songs for the first time—or maybe the first two times—without the full onslaught that it was this dude from Stranger Things, then they could listen to it with an open mind. But you know, I’m not a total idiot—you’re gonna put it together, eventually. It definitely served its purpose, and it’s an investment—it makes people feel a bit of that discovery factor, which is an exciting thing, and it makes you feel like you discovered it.”

So, while touring for Twenty Twenty more than four years ago, Keery and his Djo band would take to every stage wearing the same all-white jumpsuit, mustache and wig. It was like a modern take on Devo, where the ensemble took a “the sum is greater than its parts” approach (and they even played Daft Punk’s “Robot Rock” at each show to really hammer home the cyborg-like sameness of it all)—and Keery’s hope was that, inevitably, doing so would divert an audience’s attention away from his identity. “Maybe people would be a little bit less distracted by the fact that I was in Stranger Things if everybody on stage was dressed identically,” he explains. “I just got a real kick out of that, and everybody in the band thought it was a funny idea—so we all just dressed exactly like that character.”

Fans bought into the personas so much that, at a Djo gig at Saturn in Birmingham, Alabama, three high schoolers showed up dressed as the character. “It was the coolest thing ever, and they came up after the show and we all took a photo,” Keery says. “They had the mustache and glasses, that was amazing.” Keery is a self-proclaimed “little nerdy theater kid” at heart, having cut his teeth in the Theater in the Open performing arts camp at Maudslay State Park in his hometown of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Since then, Keery has always been drawn to shows that boast a real vivid measure of production that keeps viewers on their toes and beckons them to interact with the performances somehow.

“I think that can be a really engaging element, if done correctly,” he continues. “I think, a lot of the time, my goal is to surprise people or do something that’s slightly unexpected—because I think audiences are so smart these days and there’s so much media that you can just predict before it even happens. In movies, TV shows, albums—here comes the chorus; this is when this character is gonna die. Trying to subvert people’s expectations is really important, because it makes things stand out to people.”

Keery first subverted people’s expectations by out-of-the-blue dropping a song called “Roddy,” and I remember exactly where I was when he did. It was my last day at Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina and, upon opening up Instagram that morning, I was hit immediately with this grainy, saturated portrait of a man wearing a retro, shaggy wig, big black sunglasses and donning a perfectly sculpted 1970s pornstache. It took a second to realize it was Keery cosplaying as a mysterious, suave, time-worn version of himself with a name shortened to Djo (which, if you’re not already hip, is just pronounced “Joe” and not “D-J-O”; it’s not him, but it’s him, you dig?). He’s come a long way from the all-white futuristic get-up of Twenty Twenty, though, shifting to a David Byrne-esque, office cubicle energy for DECIDE (a full-circle moment that hits an apex in the Talking Heads-conjuring song “Gloom”). His wig closer-resembled a bowl cut, his suits got bigger and his melodies got better.

Where Twenty Twenty kick-started Djo as a synth-pop project that consistently dabbled in some serious guitar-shredding (especially on tracks like “Personal Lies” and “Ring”), DECIDE kicked the electronica up a notch and even implemented some really delightful uses of Auto-Tune. The former was just a taste of what Keery could do, and welcoming Thein completely into the fold on the latter was a revelation that, in my opinion, has changed the trajectory of Djo forever. This level-up was teased on the standalone 2020 single “Keep Your Head Up,” which remains one of the catchiest things Keery has ever written.

DECIDE is a more personal album than Twenty Twenty, arriving in a, as Keery told Rolling Stone last week, “MIDI field of intensity.” On “End of Beginning,” you get that intimacy immediately, as Keery sings about his sister Caroline, returning to Chicago and making amends with his past self. Across 13 songs—including the technicolor brilliance of “Change” and the glitchy, doomscrolling anthem “On and On”—we get as much as we can from Keery, who ultimately makes the personal an opaque pastiche and revels in the cosmic oddities of his own musical interests. Now, it’s just a matter of figuring out what big leap he can take next that doesn’t just keep fans interested in the project, but stretches the elasticity of his talents altogether.

“What’s an even more bonkers idea? Now, I’m going to be dressed exactly like Steve from Stranger Things. That’s the real hook,” he says. I ask him if that new era includes a beaten and bloodied face, since his character can never seem to make it out of each season without getting knocked around by whatever antagonist shows up to ruin his (and the town’s) day. “No, that’s all a big joke,” he says, before pausing. “But, if I were to do that, I would be beat up, yeah.”

Old-heads know that, before Keery was a star on Stranger Things or making his own music, he was a guitarist in the Chicago psych-rock band Post Animal alongside Dalton Allison, Matt Williams, Hirshland and, later, Wesley Toledo and Javi Reyes. He met Williams at DMK Burger Bar, where he was a waiter and Williams was a food runner. “We started at the same time,” Keery explains. “We had a shift together and we were joking around and, then, he was telling me that his band lost their drummer.” That drummer was Teddy Mathews, who now mans the kit for Slow Pulp.

“[Teddy] was leaving the band to play in Javi’s band and in Javi’s band was Adam [Thein], who helped mix Twenty Twenty and then produced and mixed DECIDE with me,” Keery continues. “So it’s all a big, incestuous thing, and that’s what I like about the Chicago music scene. Everybody’s buddies, everybody’s playing with each other. There’s a real sense of camaraderie, and everybody is in it for the right reasons.” And that camaraderie is a crucial element of what “End of Beginning” is about, as Keery sings about looking back at his life after he graduated from DePaul University’s Theatre School.

Post Animal dropped three key projects while Keery was still an active member: Post Animal Perform the Most Curious Water Activities, The Garden Series EP and When I Think of You in a Castle. Keery sings lead (or co-lead) on tracks like “Ralphie,” “Dirtpicker” and, my favorite, “Lonely Jones”—the latter of which remains one of Keery’s favorites, too, despite its waltzing, less flashy instrumentation never really taking on a huge life of its own when the band has played it live, at least not to the ferocious levels of popularity that a track like “When I Get Home” has garnered over the last half-decade. “Dirtpicker” is an especially great tune, too, as the band ensconces Keery’s skyscraping vocals with a fence of blistering guitars. It’s the type of colossal, soloing explosion that few contemporary acts can reach for, but Post Animal—ever the prodigious titans of shred—capture the mark with a strident finesse.

My first introduction to Post Animal came back in 2017, when I was really getting into DIY music for the first time, had no idea Keery made music and, in the midst of doomscrolling and pouring over Twin Peaks’ album Wild Onion, stumbled upon the band’s—go figure—Daytrotter session from that year. Only four or five seconds into the “Lorelei” (later renamed “Heart Made of Metal” on When I Think of You in a Castle) video, and it’s clear that the guy standing to Williams’ left is Keery. Because Post Animal put out Most Curious Water Activities in December 2015 and the first season of Stranger Things came out the next summer, Keery never got a chance to properly gig with his own band outside of Chicago, save for a few instances where they decamped to Bloomington, Madison or Davenport.

“It was a stage that I really missed out on—so that was difficult for me, in a way, and it made me a little sad,” he says. “But, I was also just so happy that the guys were catching a nice break. They were doing these larger tours—supporting tours, headlining tours—but, hopefully, I can make up for that soon and do some shows. I’m not really a real musician until I’ve played a string of shows that’s more than a week-and-a-half.”

Keery would reunite on-stage with Post Animal in the autumn of 2019 while they were on a North American tour with Twin Peaks and, coupling that with the release of Twenty Twenty just a few months earlier, it was a period of time for him that was crucial for his reintegration into the musical of his life. “I think it was really huge, and releasing Twenty Twenty, my friends and family were so kind and really encouraging with it,” he says. “I felt really comfortable enough to take a little bit of a bigger swing and try something kind of different with the next outing. I think each record is an act of trusting yourself a little bit more deeply in order to take that bigger swing.”

It’s too soon to tell what direction Keery will take Djo in next. What’s clear, though, is that, while he can’t keep up the Andy Kaufman act any longer, this newfound curiosity in what he’s doing might just be the moment that sets Keery’s solo project free once and for all. The cat’s out of the bag, and the cat is saying that Djo rules. But many of us have been ringing that bell for a minute now. Thanks to TikTok becoming so firmly integral to the preservation, sharing and evolution of contemporary music culture, more folks are around to listen to those professions than ever before. Keery is always humming around with ideas, so it’s likely that he’s already well into working on the next album—and there’s a hope that he’ll be able to embrace his inner-Electric Light Orchestra and Supertramp fantasies, as his music continues to flourish in whatever space it’s given.

“The bands that I love are the hi-fi studio bands from the ‘70s and ‘80s. Those are big influences to me, so I do have aspirations for a larger sound, if they’ll let me in these nice studios,” he says. “Coming from the absolute basements of Chicago, where you’re recording on an SM-58 hanging from a dirty rafter and trying to soundproof it so your upstairs neighbor doesn’t hear, it’s a real crazy upgrade.”

Watch Post Animal perform “You Were Not There” at the Horseshack in Davenport, Iowa in 2017 below.

Matt Mitchell reports as Paste‘s music editor from their home in Columbus, Ohio.