Kavinsky

Drawing influence from ’80s movie and video game soundtracks, French electronic producer Vincent Belorgey makes highly stylized retro synthwave under the name Kavinsky. His music was famously used in the 2011 film Drive. • Kavinsky is more than an alias for Belorgey—it’s a fictional character. As per the storyline, Kavinsky is a zombie who died in 1986 after crashing his Ferrari Testarossa. • Before music, Belorgey worked as an actor, scoring roles in films like 2001’s Nonfilm and 2007’s Steak. He shifted to music in his 30s. • Belorgey has called himself a non-musician, as he uses simple keyboard techniques to achieve his evocative throwback sound. • He debuted the Kavinsky project with the 2006 EP Teddy Boy. • Kavinsky’s single “Nightcall” was used in the title sequence to the 2011 film Drive. It also appears in the 2011 film The Lincoln Lawyer and in the video game Grand Theft Auto V. It’s amassed hundreds of millions of streams. • Named after the Sega arcade classic, Kavinsky’s 2013 debut album OutRun reached No. 2 in France and cracked the Billboard 200 albums chart in the US. • In 2013, Kavinsky released a version of “Odd Look” featuring The Weeknd. • Following a seven-year hiatus, Kavinsky shocked fans in 2020 with a verified Instagram account and a debut post that simply read “soon”.