Arcade Fire

Montreal

Win Butler grew up in suburban Houston and moved to Montreal in 2000 to study at McGill. In 2001 he formed the band with his boarding-school friend Josh Deu, and Regine Chassagne joined as the third member. She and Butler married in 2003. In 2002 they made a self-titled seven-song EP, produced by the band at the Butler family farm in Maine.

The early lineup was unstable. In winter 2003 the drummer Brendan Reed quit on stage at Casa del Popolo after an argument with Butler, and Will Butler and Tim Kingsbury replaced Reed and Dane Mills. Howard Bilerman joined that summer, and the band signed to Merge before the year was out.

Funeral

Most of Funeral was recorded in one week in August 2003 at Hotel2Tango in Montreal, and finished in 2004 for an estimated $10,000. The title reflects the deaths of relatives of several members in the months around the sessions. Merge released it on 14 September 2004. It was gold in Canada and the UK, and had sold more than 500,000 copies by November 2005, which made it the label's best-selling record.

Its singles included Wake Up and Rebellion (Lies). Pitchfork named it the best album of 2004 and the second best of the 2000s. In 2005 the band played Fashion Rocks with David Bowie, and in 2006 they were named Songwriters of the Year at the Junos.

Neon Bible and The Suburbs

For Neon Bible (2007) the band bought a former church in Farnham, Quebec and turned it into a studio. Butler said he approached his American homeland as an outsider. The record reached number two in the US and the UK and number one in Canada. No Cars Go, first heard on the 2002 EP, was re-recorded for it. In 2008 the band played for the Obama campaign and won the Juno for Alternative Album.

The Suburbs (2010) drew on the band's upbringing in The Woodlands, Texas. Butler described it as a letter from the suburbs, neither a love letter nor an indictment. It entered at number one in the US, UK and Canada, and won the Grammy for Album of the Year in February 2011, the Brit for International Album, the Juno for Album of the Year and the Polaris Prize. The band played Ready to Start straight after the Grammy win, and the title track, The Suburbs, became a single with a short film by Spike Jonze.

Reflektor and after

Reflektor (2013) was made with James Murphy and Markus Dravs in Louisiana, Jamaica and Montreal. Haitian rara shaped it, and David Bowie sang on the title song, Reflektor. It was released on 28 October 2013 and won the Juno for Album of the Year. The band headlined Glastonbury in 2014, and scored the film Her with Owen Pallett, work for which Will Butler and Pallett received an Oscar nomination.

Everything Now (2017) was their first record for Columbia, produced with Thomas Bangalter and Steve Mackey and promoted with a satirical fake-corporation campaign. It was their third US number one. Reviews were mixed. Will Butler left after the next record was finished, and We followed in May 2022, produced with Nigel Godrich and recorded partly near El Paso, Texas during the lockdown. It reached number one in the UK and number six in the US. Pink Elephant appeared in May 2025, and an ambient companion, Open Your Heart or Die Trying, came out for Record Store Day on 18 April 2026.

Funeral is widely ranked among the best albums of the decade. Stereogum called it arguably the most influential indie rock album of its time. The band's own list of influences includes Bowie, Talking Heads, Springsteen, Roxy Music, Radiohead and U2, and U2 used Wake Up to open shows on their Vertigo Tour.