Hot Chip

Putney bedrooms

Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard met as pupils at Elliott School in Putney, and in 2000 they started Hot Chip as a project recorded in their bedrooms. Taylor went on to read English at Jesus College, Cambridge. The early records were small: the Mexico EP in 2001 on Victory Garden, the self-released San Frandisco in 2002, and Down With Prince in January 2003. Rob Smoughton was their first drummer, from 2001 until 2003, when he left to start his own project, Grovesnor.

Moshi Moshi signed them in 2003. By the time the debut album, Coming on Strong, came out on 24 May 2004, the band had become a five-piece with Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin. DFA and Astralwerks released it in the United States late in 2005.

The Warning

The Warning, released by EMI on 22 May 2006, was the breakthrough. It reached 34 in Britain and went gold, was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize and was Mixmag's album of the year. Over and Over and Boy from School both made the UK top 40, and Over and Over was nominated for an Ivor Novello award in 2007. That year the band also mixed a DJ-Kicks set for Studio !K7, and Goddard co-founded the label Greco-Roman, which later released Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and Disclosure.

Made in the Dark

For the third album the band left the bedroom behind. With a bigger budget after signing to DFA, distributed by EMI, they tracked at The Strongroom in London with their live engineer Jonathan Digby, playing on their tour setup and adding overdubs later. Much of the material had been played live for about two years. Martin called it a more traditional rock-band way of recording, and a true group effort: Taylor and Goddard wrote lyrics first and the others shaped the songs.

Made in the Dark came out on 4 February 2008 and reached four in Britain, their highest album placing, and went gold. Ready for the Floor went to six, the band's highest-charting single, and was nominated for Best Dance Recording at the Grammys, losing to Daft Punk. One Pure Thought followed in May. In March 2008 Robert Wyatt re-recorded songs from the album with them for a limited EP sold through independent shops.

Domino and after

One Life Stand (2010, Parlophone) reached eleven. Around it the members spread out: Taylor made a solo album, Rubbed Out, and formed the improvising group About Group, Goddard released Harvest Festival, and Doyle joined LCD Soundsystem on guitar, playing their Madison Square Garden farewell in 2011. Doyle and Martin made two albums as New Build. Smoughton came back, first as touring drummer and then on guitar, bass and synths.

From In Our Heads (2012), their best American chart placing at 62, the band have been on Domino, which followed with Why Make Sense? (2015), A Bath Full of Ecstasy (2019) and Freakout/Release (2022). Domino's biography calls them a thinking person's party band, and quotes The Guardian naming them the greatest British pop group of their generation. They played Glastonbury in 2023 and their first NPR Tiny Desk in 2024.

Live, Over and Over and Ready for the Floor are their two most played songs, each logged close to four hundred times on setlist.fm. A best-of, Joy in Repetition, arrived in September 2025, and on 17 July 2026 Domino issued the first reissues of The Warning, Made in the Dark and One Life Stand, each with a digital second disc of B-sides and rarities.

Making this record was definitely us trying to defy expectations and do something exciting.

Hot Chip on The Warning, 2026