Twenty One Pilots on Their Musical Bromance and Fleeting Fame

Twenty One Pilots have blown up at top 40 radio, sold out massive arenas and even drawn the ire of millennial-bashing columnists with an unapologetic mashup of suburban angst, rap and reggae. But to Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun, all that matters is their bond - with each other and their (millennial) fans. “It probably seems like two good-looking guys making pop music. But really it’s just the opposite.”

- Jonathan Ringen

When you’re the biggest band ever to explode out of a music-obsessed college town like Columbus, Ohio, people there tend to give you what you want. For Twenty One Pilots, whose genre-defying smash “Stressed Out” has climbed to the top of every radio format short of country, the request on this chilly early-spring day is a modest one: They just need to briefly commandeer the sound system at the Newport Music Hall, a local rock club where they cut their teeth. Tyler Joseph, 27, the two-man crew’s singer-songwriter, has just been Dropbox-ed a new mix of a tune that’s in contention for the soundtrack of a major summer blockbuster, and he’s eager to give it a spin. As drummer Josh Dun, 27, goes off in search of his luggage -- he mostly lives in Los Angeles these days and is heading there in a couple of hours -- Joseph plugs his iPhone into the club’s soundboard, positions himself on the empty floor’s sonic sweetspot and signals for the tech to let it rip.