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Chameleon
"The Velvet Sundown: The band that’s not quite Human, not quite machine. "
00:39:43
They were a hot new band and storming up the charts. But something seemed off about Velvet Sundown. Was this the work of AI? When someone behind the band came out denying it, this looked like mystery solved. But this was only the beginning of an internet hoax with many layers.
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- [00:00]
Ashley Flowers
For decades, some cold cases have been reduced to files in a cabinet. But not anymore. I'm Ashley Flowers, and me and my team on the Deck have been traveling across the country to report on these forgotten cases. And in some instances, it's resulted in these cases being solved after decades. Join me every Wednesday as we revive these stories one card at a time. Listen to the Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:32]
Delia d'Ambra
Campsite Media.
- [00:35]
Josh Dean
Hello.
- [00:36]
Tim Boucher
What is.
- [00:37]
Josh Dean
What do you want me to say? Chameleon Chameleon.
- [00:42]
Tim Boucher
Chameleon Weekly oh.
- [00:46]
Josh Dean
In early summer 2025, a new band started to gain traction on Spotify in any rock group called the Velvet Sundown, all fuzzy guitars and psych pop harmonies, a bit of a throwback to the 60s or 70s. There were four of Gabe Farrow, Lenny West, Milo Rains, and the drummer Orion Delmar, who goes by Rio. At one point in July, the Velvet Sundown had close to a million monthly listeners on Spotify and appeared on some big curated playlists, not unheard of for a new band to get attention like this. Only no one seemed to know anything about this band or where they had come from. No one had seen them live. They had no obvious online presence. Raise your hand, don't look away. Something felt off to the Canadian journalist Kevin Maiman, who works on the daily news desk for the cbc.
- [01:43]
Kevin Maiman
I follow a lot of, like, music blogs and stuff. Like, I'm a musician and kind of a nerd about music happenings. So yeah, I started seeing this Velvet Sundown thing pop up all over the.
- [01:54]
Josh Dean
Place and it intrigued him.
- [01:56]
Kevin Maiman
You know, I've talked to some music critics about it and they all say, this is trash, this is garbage. But I thought it was pretty good. Dust on the Wind is a really catchy tune.
- [02:08]
Josh Dean
It is catchy, and this was a prolific new artist. There were already two albums, Floating on Echoes and Dust in Silence, both released in the space of 15 days in June of 2025.
- [02:22]
Tim Boucher
Ashes fall on Sacred Land.
- [02:26]
Josh Dean
When you search online, you find the pretty typical band photos, the guys screwing around in the back of their tour van or crammed into a studio recording and eating burgers. But if you look closer, as Kevin.
- [02:37]
Kevin Maiman
Did, I took a look at it and was like, you know, these images are clearly AI if you know what to look for.
- [02:46]
Josh Dean
It's obvious. No brand names on the instruments, a guitar with a tuning peg, missing fingers that bend ever so slightly the wrong way, and everything with an eerie yellow tinge. Which, yeah, okay, I'd probably describe it as both velvety and sundowny, but I wouldn't describe these images as convincingly real. Oh, and in one photo, the drummer Rio is there twice.
- [03:08]
Kevin Maiman
But the music, I, you know, I didn't take it as AI immediately, to be honest. So I found that very interesting. I thought, there's so many possibilities here, like maybe, maybe these are real musicians, but they just don't want to reveal their identities. There's so many different ways this could have gone.
- [03:31]
Josh Dean
Kevin was intrigued enough to start working on a story.
- [03:34]
Kevin Maiman
I sort of pitched that story about, like, the mystery of this band with people, you know, debating, what is this AI? Is this not AI?
- [03:43]
Josh Dean
It's worth remembering that this was just last year, but even a span of a few months is a long time in this whirlwind AI universe we're now inhabiting. Reddit was crawling with theories. In the wake of the Velvet Sundown's arrival on the scene, most people were sure the band wasn't real and they were furious about this perceived deception. Then on July 5, 2025, a Twitter or X account called called Velvetsundown appeared with a one line bio that read, yes, we are a real band and we never use AI. The account started posting frequently, adamantly denying.
- [04:20]
Kevin Maiman
Allegations of AI and saying, reporters aren't even reaching out to me or something like that.
- [04:26]
Josh Dean
Now, if there's one guaranteed way to get journalists attention, accuse them of not doing their jobs. And now there was an actual person or people behind a social media account that had opened its DMs.
- [04:38]
Kevin Maiman
So I, as many other reporters did, reached out and got an email back pretty quickly from the Velvet Sundown Gmail.
- [04:46]
Josh Dean
From someone who claimed to speak for the band. And he was willing to talk.
- [04:50]
Kevin Maiman
So he said he would answer some questions via email. I said, we don't generally do email interviews. Can we do a call? And yeah, so that's how I kind of got into it.
- [05:00]
Josh Dean
The Velvet Sundown had their pick of options for an exclusive. At this point, they didn't go with Kevin. Not surprisingly, they chose the legendary rock publication Rolling Stone. And in a piece that came out on July 2, 2025, an adjunct member of the band named Andrew Frellen came clean. Yes, he admitted to Rolling Stone, the Velvet Sundown had used AI to make their music. At least in part. It's trolling, he told the magazine People. Before, they didn't care about what we did, and now suddenly we're talking to Rolling Stone. So it's like, is that wrong? It seemed in the end, a marketing trick. The Velvet Sundown had just pretended to be a full on real band in order to generate interest in this otherwise forgettable AI music project. Mystery solved. Well, no foreign. I'm Josh Dean and this is Chameleon, the weekly show about people and things that aren't quite what they seem. This week, the story of the Velvet Sundown, a hoax wrapped in a hoax that has us questioning what's actually real and whether that even matters. Anyway.
- [06:23]
Ashley Flowers
When a Midwest wife and mother named Bonnie Schultz vanishes the same evening she told her husband she wanted a divorce, everyone suspects her husband did something to her. On Crime Junkie, we just released a two part story that lets you be the judge. In part one, I'll tell you why everyone was suspicious of Bonnie's husband, Rick. But in part two, I'll reveal to you some never before released details that might change your view of this case completely. Listen to missing Bonnie Schultz, parts one and two on Crime Junkie, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [07:05]
Kevin Maiman
Chameleon, Chameleon, Chameleon.
- [07:07]
Josh Dean
This is Chameleon Weekly.
- [07:11]
Tim Boucher
My name is Tim Boucher. I live outside of Quebec City. I am an American, but I've been here for 14 years and I like to think of myself as living the American dream of becoming a Canadian.
- [07:21]
Josh Dean
Tim's an artist, but he's also spent years working in the world of tech.
- [07:25]
Tim Boucher
Specifically in online safety, content moderation policy, doing open source investigations into accounts to see if they are really whoever they claim to be or if there's some factual basis in a claim.
- [07:40]
Josh Dean
This work, known as red teaming, is about testing the security limits of Internet.
- [07:44]
Tim Boucher
Operations where you try to mimic the techniques and the tactics of an attacker who's trying to manipulate your platform or break your login system or something.
- [07:54]
Josh Dean
Being immersed in this world, it's only natural that these ideas found their way into Tim's art.
- [07:59]
Tim Boucher
It kind of like seeps into every part of your brain and changes how you think about things. And my art kind of like started to reflect this sort of like meta conspiratorial mindset that I would have to bring as part of my job.
- [08:12]
Josh Dean
Tim says that he was just keeping up with his usual Google alerts on AI art in June of 2025 when he spotted something that caught his eye. A band called the Velvet Sundown that was climbing fast on Spotify.
- [08:24]
Tim Boucher
You know, the headlines were like, this band is, you know, gaining traction on Spotify and has 300,000 monthly listeners or something, and yet they have no digital footprint.
- [08:35]
Josh Dean
This, Tim says, gave him an idea.
- [08:37]
Tim Boucher
When I saw this line and I was like, and yet they have no digital footprint it's like, well, you know, yet.
- [08:43]
Josh Dean
What if his next art project was giving a voice to a band that didn't really exist? That might be fun.
- [08:49]
Tim Boucher
I thought about it for maybe 24 hours or something, and then I took, like, an old Twitter account that I wasn't using and I reskinned it to be that band.
- [08:57]
Josh Dean
Tim took the images and album artwork he found for the Velvet Sundown online and added them to his new fake account. Now, he guessed people who went looking might assume he was the real band or was speaking for it in some way.
- [09:09]
Tim Boucher
And I had ChatGPT write up basically, like, an angry tweet thread that was like, I can't believe these journalists didn't reach out to us before publishing their piece. And everyone says we're so hard to find, but we're just here. Like, this is sloppy journalism, stuff like that.
- [09:24]
Josh Dean
Tim knew from experience what would happen next.
- [09:27]
Tim Boucher
You call out the journalists and then they come, like, sort of sniffing, not sure what's what. And then it reaches, like, a critical mass.
- [09:34]
Josh Dean
As soon as he opened his DMs, the inbox filled up.
- [09:37]
Tim Boucher
I had, like, every major industry magazine asking for an interview. You know, it was like Rolling Stone, Variety, Billboard, things that, like, never in your wildest dreams as a weirdo artist, musician could you ever plan to get that kind of coverage.
- [09:57]
Josh Dean
Now, Tim had a problem. He'd been emailing all these journos, Kevin Mayman at CBC included, but eventually he knew they'd want to speak to someone in person. If he kept dodging and was only taking questions by email, they would likely get wise to the hoax he was spinning.
- [10:12]
Tim Boucher
At first I was like, well, fuck, what should I do? Because I didn't want to just lie.
- [10:17]
Josh Dean
Obviously a problem, because Tim says he knew no more than anyone else about the actual Velvet Sundown.
- [10:22]
Tim Boucher
And I had a friend who, like, he's kind of a good improviser and in the moment kind of a guy. So I was going to have him do it, but he wasn't available on the schedule, because when you start to get this kind of, like, feeding frenzy of media coverage, you have to go, go, go, if you want to get all of them in within a certain publish window so they're not just copying each other, you know? So finally I was like, okay, I'm just going to do it.
- [10:46]
Josh Dean
Tim scheduled two interviews on the same day with the titles he thought would give him the most impact. Rolling Stone was an obvious choice, but first he had a call scheduled with the Washington Post.
- [10:56]
Tim Boucher
I was trying to say you know, we're a real band, we're real people, we use digital tools, blah, blah, blah. But we don't use AI because I was still trying to push this thing of we don't use AI because this is a really good way to get people wound up on social media is just, like, making absurd claims about AI and then, like, standing by statements that are obviously dumb and just, like, gunning, you know, like, pushing the gas on those statements. It's just like a way to get the engine revving, you know.
- [11:24]
Josh Dean
To Tim, the whole thing was sort of ludicrous.
- [11:26]
Tim Boucher
It's so obviously AI, but saying that it's not AI is just like. There's no word to describe how dumb it is when you have all of it together in front of you, you know, like. And, you know, I tried to stick with this claim of, like, we. There's multiple people in my. My group of friends and we have like a Slack chat and we share files back and forth and we kind of, like, edit them. And, you know, which is partly true. Like, I do have a group of friends like that, but we didn't do this project, you know, so I. I kind of was, like, doing that. And he was trying to ask me, like, sort of the typical questions of, like, the influences of the music and, you know, all this stuff. And I just kind of, like, repeated the things that people already said in the news articles, and it was, like, pretty boring and pretty vanilla. But I could tell that he, like, didn't really buy what I was selling, you know, but he was nice about it and, you know, he asked questions and whatever.
- [12:14]
Josh Dean
After the interview, Tim says the journalist called him back. The recorder had apparently not worked, and the writer asked for a summary. Tim couldn't remember exactly what he'd said, so he just faked his way through it.
- [12:25]
Tim Boucher
So his coverage didn't go anywhere because he had nothing. I didn't give him anything to work with, basically anything that was, like, verifiable because he wanted me to be like, well, if you can somehow verify that you're involved with the band, you know, have them email me, whatever. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll do that. So. And I never did that, because I can't do that.
- [12:43]
Josh Dean
It was the Rolling Stone interview later that day that blew things up.
- [12:46]
Tim Boucher
I was warmed up, you know, I knew what kind of material worked, what seemed shaky as a pretense.
- [12:52]
Josh Dean
Tim called the Rolling Stone writer from a temporary number he had set up so that he couldn't be traced and gave a fake name he asked me.
- [12:59]
Tim Boucher
What my name was, and I said Andrew Frellon, which in French fralon means like, hornet. And, you know, like, you don't want to have hornets at your house because, like, they're not. Like, it's not like a bee, but when a bee stings you, you know, like its stinger comes out and then later on it dies like a hornet. Like, they keep, they, they keep stinging you and you don't. You don't want them at your house. And it was the summertime and I knew that there were some nearby and, like, it was on my mind, so it was just like a concept in my head. And so most of the conversation was me being like, oh, no, no, we didn't do that. It's not AI. And I, I just said like, well, I'm an adjunct member of the band, which in some world I am. It depends on how you adjunct that member. You know, he just wanted to press me on whether or not we used AI And I resisted and said, you know, we didn't use it for this, we didn't use it for that. And then he kind of went little by little and was like, well, is it possible that you just used it for certain element? And I was like, yeah, possible. It's like an interrogative technique, you know, it's a way to draw slowly a bigger truth of a narrative. And I had never encountered it before, but it seems like a good idea to try it from his perspective, you know, But I was just like, well, I can see where he's going and I'm just going to like, give him enough rope to hang himself on this because he's got already the idea that whoever it is, me or somebody else, that they use Suno, they did this. They did this.
- [14:24]
Josh Dean
Suno is software for creating AI music. You put in a few prompts and almost instantly it spins out a whole track, lyrics and all. It's honestly amazing and a little scary.
- [14:34]
Tim Boucher
He already had the article written in his mind and he. All he wanted from me was quotes that supported what his pitch basically was in the beginning, it was just so obvious. And he had, like, written a book about Suno when the company started. And so I just was like, yeah, you know, every time that he asked me, well, is it possible that you also did this? And I was like, look, I've never told anybody else this, but yes, we did. We did that. And he bought it hook, line and sinker.
- [15:02]
Josh Dean
Tim Boucher's hoax, he claims, was intended to make a point about journalists checking their facts. And the dangers of not doing enough research and how that can help lead to and spread disinformation. He definitely knew what he was doing, but says he laced clues into the interview that should have given the writer a heads up.
- [15:19]
Tim Boucher
You know, he was sort of asking, like, what inspired this or whatever. And I. I said that I've always been really interested in art hoaxes, you know, like. And I. I named some of them, which maybe if you're not in the UK, like the Leeds 13. Like, do you know who that is?
- [15:34]
Josh Dean
I did not know. But if you'll excuse the brief detour, this is a great hoax. In 1998, a group of university art students from Leeds in the United Kingdom, yes, there were 13 of them, said that their final year project was a trip to Ibiza funded by the university, a work of, quote, living art about leisure, youth, culture and the package holiday as a modern rite of passage. Only they didn't go to Ibiza at all. They got fake tans, bought props and staged photo shoots, all while still in rainy northern England. The press lapped it up and a lot of people were pissed about this public money paying to send students on a sunny holiday to a notorious party island.
- [16:14]
Tim Boucher
It went all over the media as though it were really the fake scenario that they posed. But it wasn't, you know, it was an art project. And the whole thing was like, to sort of dupe the media and show how the media works and all these reactions and stuff to it.
- [16:27]
Josh Dean
Tim thinks that Rolling Stone should have spotted the clue and recognized that there was something else going on here. But the deception was kind of his whole game. I'm not sure the journalist stood a chance, because Tim also knew that all the journalists chasing him for an interview were on deadlines to get the story out first.
- [16:44]
Tim Boucher
If he had spent maybe more time talking about or looking at that specific reference, he might have been like, wait a minute, maybe there's. Maybe there's another layer here. It's like people are trying to get stories out fast and they want to be the first one with this breaking thing.
- [16:58]
Josh Dean
The Rolling Stone exclusive came out on July 3. It confirmed that the Velvet Sundown's music was made using AI, which might have been true, but Tim wasn't someone who could verify that, given that, by his own admission, he had nothing to do with the band. And he quickly followed up the article with his own confession, because if people didn't know what he'd done, what was the point of it in the first place?
- [17:20]
Tim Boucher
Because obviously, like, once that article hit it was only just the clock ticking until the real band was like, hey, that's not really us, you know.
- [17:27]
Josh Dean
So he spun up a medium account for his pseudonym and published the post. I am Andrew Frelen, the guy running the fake Velvet Sundown Twitter. Here's why I did was just like.
- [17:38]
Tim Boucher
A matter of being in the right place at the right time and having some background knowledge of how this works and just being in this space of, like, playing and pretending and like sort of this flexible idea of identity and how that can be art in itself. Because how do you know who is really what on the Internet or the way that the Internet and media and technology works now is that things that are fake a lot of times have more power than things that are real. And even if we know that they're.
- [18:06]
Josh Dean
Fake, this is a topic that Tim the artist is very interested in. Like the Leeds 13 students, he was using his hoax to get attention for his work and his ideas. And if you read that interview with Rolling Stone, it's all there. His hoax was a successful way to platform his actual thoughts on AI and to encourage a conversation.
- [18:27]
Tim Boucher
Apart from my claims about being involved with the band and how the band works, everything that I said in the interview was like, completely my real opinions. As someone who has used AI a lot in the arts and who has taken a lot of shit for it.
- [18:40]
Josh Dean
His comments are nuanced and interesting. Should we ignore AI, fight against it, or quote, should we dive into it and just let it be the emerging native language of the Internet?
- [18:50]
Tim Boucher
There's all this conversation around, like, oh, well, we have to label everything as AI generated, or we have to label things that are fake or satire or, you know, like XYZ criteria that people act like, oh, well, once we label it, everything's going to be fine. But it's like we know that things are fake and we still perpetuate them all the time. And that's how we sort of share value and build relationships. And it's like that's a fundamental part of. Of being a person and communicating it. So it's like, we can't just use technology to fix these things about human nature that are just, like, fundamental in the first place. And that's always where the conversation goes. It's like, well, let's use AI to detect other AI and then let's use fact checkers. And there's always this layer of like, oh, well, we'll just add this one more thing. And this everything is going to be fine. And it's never fine. It gets worse. And worse and more and more complicated.
- [19:41]
Josh Dean
He's not kidding. Join me after the break when it gets a lot more complicated as Tim, Kevin and I all dig into the question. I'm sure you're all wondering who actually was behind this mysterious band, the Velvet Sundown.
- [20:06]
Ashley Flowers
When a Midwest wife and mother named Bonnie Schultz vanishes the same evening she told her husb husband she wanted a divorce, everyone suspects her husband did something to her. On Crime Junkie, we just released a two part story that lets you be the judge. In part one, I'll tell you why everyone was suspicious of Bonnie's husband, Rick. But in part two, I'll reveal to you some never before released details that might change your view of this case completely. Listen to Missing Bonnie Schultz, parts one and two on Crime Junkie. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:50]
Josh Dean
You're listening to Chameleon, the weekly Chameleon. The same day Tim Boucher posted a confession as Andrew Frellin detailing the scam he'd pulled on Rolling Stone, a message appeared on the official Spotify page for the Velvet Sundown saying that Frelin had nothing to do with them, just as Tim predicted they would. And whoever was behind that page dmed Rolling Stone requesting a correction. We ask that reporting on us be based on verifiable sources, not fabricated accounts or synthetic media. And the real band, if there even was one, was not giving any clues. We understand the intrigue our project inspires. They said in the DM to Rolling Stone, and we're not here to dispel mystery.
- [21:33]
Kevin Maiman
You know, I'm going to bring up the thread so I can remember a little bit better.
- [21:38]
Josh Dean
This is CBC journalist Kevin Maiman again.
- [21:40]
Kevin Maiman
Yeah, here we go. Velvet follow up. Yeah, so I send some questions. He doesn't answer them.
- [21:47]
Josh Dean
He means Tim, who was still Andrew Frelen to him at this point.
- [21:52]
Kevin Maiman
And then the Rolling Stone article comes out. I was like, okay, I understand now why he's not answering my question questions. Yeah. So at that point, I thought that was probably the end of it. I did feel kind of personally tricked at first. And I was very grateful, honestly, that, you know, I took my time a bit with this story and didn't end up in the situation that the Rolling Stone reporter did. Because, you know, maybe there's another scenario where that was me. Well, this is all the same day.
- [22:24]
Tim Boucher
Okay.
- [22:26]
Kevin Maiman
So then I saw the Medium article where he says, no, I was lying to Rolling Stone.
- [22:33]
Josh Dean
The mystery of the Velvet Sundown remained, but there was now another story on top of that. The story of the hoaxer who had pretended to represent the band, the man calling himself Andrew Frellen.
- [22:44]
Kevin Maiman
And so then I emailed him about that right away and was like, can you talk about this? And he said, yes, as long as we can use my pseudonym, just in.
- [22:53]
Josh Dean
Case you've lost track. That's Tim Boucher Talking to the CBC's Kevin Maiman under the made up name Andrew Frellen.
- [23:01]
Tim Boucher
I was like, okay, I'm going to come out in Canadian media because CBC is publicly funded and I think it's cool to have publicly funded, high quality journalism. So I was basically did it as like, you know, my, my patriotic duty to the Canadian news ecosystem of giving them the real story and my real identity and exposing that there.
- [23:25]
Josh Dean
Kevin did his due diligence. He kept his word and didn't reveal Andrew was actually Tim, but he did check and confirm his background and identity. They did a video call and Tim sent him screenshots of the Rolling Stone interview, as well as connecting Kevin to a second source, a friend who corroborated the story.
- [23:43]
Kevin Maiman
I definitely had a bit of a guard up with him just knowing that he was, you know, capable of and interested in doing things like that, you know, pranking journalists. I guess he was maybe friendlier than I expected for someone who just, you know, pulled off this hoax and seemed to have maybe a disdain for journalists.
- [24:05]
Josh Dean
Kevin's piece came out on July 5, just two days after the Rolling Stone article. Tim hadn't wanted to be named because he was worried about losing work or experiencing backlash online. But the article explained his motivations for the hoax. I'm really exploiting the uncertainty, Tim had told him. And I think that's the art. The way the whole thing has played out has become like artistic jet fuel, you know.
- [24:27]
Kevin Maiman
It wasn't the most read story I ever wrote, but I think people who were interested in it were very interested.
- [24:34]
Josh Dean
Still. Kevin himself wasn't totally satisfied because there was still one very big open question.
- [24:41]
Kevin Maiman
It got me really wanting to get to the bottom of this mystery, right? I wanted to know who is actually behind this band.
- [24:50]
Josh Dean
In a way that totally understandable feeling really underlines the point Tim was making with his provocation. What was real and what was not was becoming increasingly blurred.
- [25:01]
Tim Boucher
So, like the media coverage after that, it referenced the Rolling Stone article, but it also referenced my Medium article. And then like, people started to like, copy each other's reporting. And things continued to get distorted as they got translated to other languages. And some, you know, major media in other countries kept reporting the original fake claims without you know, ever having done any of the follow on research and now it's informationally, it's just like a crazy mess.
- [25:34]
Kevin Maiman
I was kind of getting more and more in my head as he kept posting and being like, you know, what if he was just being really nice to me? What if he is still behind this band? Because there's no way you can prove a negative, right? I couldn't prove without beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had nothing to do with Velvet Sundown. Then he started teasing this big announcement coming up I think July 14, big announcement. And I was just getting more and more nervous. I was kind of paranoid about it, thinking, oh no, he's going to reveal that he was the one behind this all. And then nothing came on that date. And I think it was three days later he comes up with that Medium post saying, yeah, I am behind it all. And when I initially read that, I.
- [26:18]
Josh Dean
Was like, oh shit, Tim, as Andrew Frelen, published his second Medium post, this one titled so yeah, I did make Velvet Sundown on 17 July, two weeks later. The Velvet Sundown was never meant to be a prank or art or any of that he wrote. This was quite simply a commissioned test. Now Tim was saying he had been commissioned to create the Velvet Sundown by a company that wanted to explore the money making potential of AI bands. Velvet Sundown, he now claimed was a prototype.
- [26:49]
Kevin Maiman
I emailed him about it and was like, yeah, so I saw the Medium article. He emailed back and said, oh yeah, that was fake. You know, you can see that it's tagged satire.
- [27:00]
Josh Dean
He's right. If you look very closely and which.
- [27:04]
Kevin Maiman
Is something I hadn't noticed, but it's also very, not very noticeable on Medium. You know, it's a little tag at the bottom of the article and doesn't necessarily mean that it really is satire either. So, yeah, and then we had some more back and forth about it and I was reassured, given all the evidence and everything, you know, that we were talking about that, yeah, there's no way he could have actually been the guy.
- [27:33]
Josh Dean
No way. Kevin believes him, but I'm not so sure. Tim has a rich history with Internet hoaxes, or at least with circling around them. Many of them involve media and AI. He pulled the same trick he'd pulled with Velvet Sundown, creating a Persona for an AI bot journalist called Margot Blanchard, who fooled publications like Wired and Business Insider into publishing her writing, which was strewn with fake sources and facts. He's engaged extensively with the whole lore around a lost continent called Quatria and watched conspiracy theorists run with it. He's used AI to co write dozens of surreal world building books which he releases on his own imprint. That one he's the creator of, but the others he's claiming to be exposing the AI, drawing attention to it. But wouldn't it be the perfect hoax and kind of genius if he'd also been the originator? To me, it would make at least some sense that Tim was in fact the Velvet Sundown all along. And of course we were going to ask him, which he obviously saw coming and brought up before we got the chance.
- [28:42]
Tim Boucher
So now, like every time I talk to a journalist, they're always at the end of the conversation, they're like, yeah, well that's, that's all really interesting, but at the end of the day it's really you, right? And it's like, no, it's really not me. But everyone assumes that it is because the real band, no one else from the real group or artist or whatever ever stepped out and gave any other interview or anything besides that little quote to Rolling Stone and maybe to one of these other like second or third tier music websites.
- [29:11]
Josh Dean
Tim's interest is obviously attention for his work as an artist and for the bigger points he's making about AI and music. So if he really is behind Velvet Sundown, it's already served his purpose. He'd have little to gain from admitting it, and a lot to gain for twisting people like me in knots. If someone else is behind Velvet Sundown, it could be for any number of reasons. First and foremost, for the money that can be made from streaming music that cost basically nothing to make, in which case they're probably delighted by the attention generated by Tim's antics. But why would they bother admitting it at this point? At the end of his apparently satirical confession post, the one he wrote on July 17, Andrew Frelland announced that this was the end of the Velvet Sundown project. He said that Paper Sun Rebellion, the band's third album released three days prior to the post, would be the final album. And as of this moment, more than nine months later, there's been no additional music. The Velvet Sundown is still there on Spotify, but any confusion about whether or not the band is real has been wiped away. The band's about page now says this. The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction and composed, voiced and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence. This isn't a trick. It's a mirror, an ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the Boundaries of authorship, identity and the future of music itself in the age of AI The Velvet Sundown, in the end, faded away as quickly as they burst onto the scene. A true case of the flame that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. Millions of downloads, piles of words from the digital press coverage, all in a three month, nine day career. But they're not completely gone either. The band still has 78,000 followers and more than 166,900 monthly listeners on Spotify to this day. And despite his very earnest seeming medium confessional, Tim Boucher continues to deny that he had anything to do with the band. And for what it's worth, he's convinced Kevin, the journalist who probably knows him the best at this point, that he wasn't the culprit.
- [31:20]
Kevin Maiman
I feel like at some point you have to trust your gut on these things. So I am convinced that it's not him. Although if it turns out that it is him, it wouldn't be the biggest surprise in the world. And I think from that point we started sort of talking back and forth about our, like, theories on who it might be. And that sort of went on for a little while.
- [31:46]
Josh Dean
Kevin was one of several people recruited into a group effort Tim was apparently leading to track down the actual people behind the band.
- [31:54]
Tim Boucher
There were weeks where we were sending each other emails back and forth, maybe five or six emails a day with like, did you check this? What about this? When this.
- [32:01]
Kevin Maiman
Just anytime one of us saw a potential lead, we'd kind of throw it in there and be like, hey, have you seen this? And that was fun. It was fun to have that, you know, as a little element of my workday, as sort of the poking away at this strange mystery.
- [32:19]
Josh Dean
Tim says that it was one of the most thorough open source investigations he'd ever been involved with. The group followed clues looking for any connection to the original Velvet Sundown Spotify account. Once they thought they had identified someone posting from an IP address coming from Italy, but it turned out to be nothing. There were many false leads.
- [32:40]
Kevin Maiman
At one point he brought up this guy who had uploaded all of their lyrics and albums on genius.com and seemingly like immediately upon their release. I think there's a point where we both were like, this has got to be the guy. Who else would be ridiculous enough to do that? But he eventually reached this guy and said that he was convinced after talking to him that it wasn't him.
- [33:07]
Josh Dean
Then there were the other people who came forward and admitted they were the band, including the person who claimed to be behind the band's official website, velvetsundown.com that person's name, Otway St. Mark, which sounds like one of those obviously fake names the AI cooks up when spamming your inbox about important services it can offer. This Otway St. Marq claimed to be the fake band's manager.
- [33:30]
Kevin Maiman
He sends me these really flowery, funny emails, sort of like talks and riddles, and he just, he can't answer a single question for me. He kind of just kept doing this whole thing where he was like, you know, the ambiguity is the point. You know, the, the, the mystery is the point. And it's like, okay, you probably have nothing to do with this, but he had a good story about how he is managing them. He's living on this farm in Vermont and managing this AI band. And there's a whole network of people around the world, world that are involved in it. And that part of it could very well be true. I, I don't know.
- [34:10]
Josh Dean
Every lead came up short.
- [34:12]
Tim Boucher
There are all these signals that exist, but they're not consistent with each other. And individually they're inconclusive. And then when they're inconsistent together, you kind of have nothing, you know, like, you kind of have a bunch of signals that don't point in the same direction.
- [34:29]
Josh Dean
We've looked too, and ultimately got no closer to solving the mystery than the gang of Internet sleuths led by the main suspect.
- [34:39]
Kevin Maiman
I did reach back out just yesterday to the actual Velvet Sundown Twitter. I was just like, hey, you know, now that. Now that the circus has died down, do you want to talk? I mean, your monthly listeners have dropped by 800,000, so maybe you want to do something to get yourself back in the. The news cycle kind of thing. But, yeah, I haven't heard back yet. I'm not spending a lot of time trying to figure out the mystery at this point. But still, still poking around here and there.
- [35:10]
Josh Dean
The reality is that the only person who knows who Velvet Sundown is is probably the person who uploaded the music and owns the Twitter account linked to that page. If they don't want to be found, they probably won't be. Everything else is just false signals.
- [35:26]
Tim Boucher
The.
- [35:26]
Josh Dean
That only get more distorted as more hoaxers join the fray. Even Tim claims to be losing track.
- [35:32]
Tim Boucher
There are parts of the story that I just don't know, you know, like the real ban, Nobody's found them. And that's so weird to me. And it keeps happening with all of these AI bands is like, you know, there's another one breaking rust or what's and there's another.
- [35:46]
Josh Dean
On December 1st, Tim published another Medium post, this time claiming responsibility for creating the country AI star Breaking Rust. He's also published posts owning up for making other successful AI artists, including Bleeding Verse, Aventhis and Nlie Blue. Only some of these posts are tagged satire, but honestly, who even knows what that means at this point? Tim's hoax achieved its goal. It made us question whether our favorite new artist is actually real and whether or not we even care what comes next and what do we want?
- [36:22]
Kevin Maiman
I think he accomplished his goal in that respect.
- [36:26]
Josh Dean
The mere existence of Velvet Sundown has made a lot of people angry. Angry that they were fooled, angry that AI music is threatening the livelihood of real musicians as well as threatening diversity and creativity in the music we listen to. But the reality is Velvet Sundown worked. Hundreds of thousands of people listened to. As Tim wrote in his second confession, as Andrew Frellin People say they don't like it and don't want AI artists, but the traffic massively says otherwise. The Velvet Sundown was not the first AI band, but a trickle is quickly becoming a stream.
- [37:02]
Kevin Maiman
I was saying like, this is going to be normal very soon. And it seems like, yeah, now there's all these AI songs topping the digital charts.
- [37:12]
Josh Dean
And yeah, in late 2025, an artist called Zinaya Monet became one of the first AI musicians to chart on Billboard, topping the R and B digital song sales chart and making the hot R and B songs list. Breaking Rust had the most downloaded country song in November 2025. AI music is real. For better or worse. It's now part of the landscape. And whether or not Velvet Sundown was originally intended as simply a bit of AI slop created in 15 minutes, the band is now so much more than that.
- [37:47]
Kevin Maiman
It kind of cropped this whole, like, whole like mini industry around Velvet Sundown. There's so many bands popping up on Spotify with the same name or similar names or the same pictures and she's trying to capitalize on it. And yeah, then these guys selling, trying to sell merch. And then I think at one point Tim posted a bunch of Velvet Sundown T shirt designs, although he wasn't trying to profit off of them. So I respect that. But yeah, it did really become this whole thing where it's like, who's involved, who's not, does it matter?
- [38:23]
Josh Dean
This brings me back to something Tim said when he was recounting his interview with Rolling Stone. I missed the significance of it at the time.
- [38:31]
Tim Boucher
I just said like, well, I'm an adjunct member of the band, which in some world I am. It depends on how you adjunct that member.
- [38:42]
Josh Dean
You know, all the people pretending to be the Velvet Sundown have created a lore, a whole story of a band that does have real music, whether you want to ascribe any real value to that music or not. It could be one person, even Tim sock puppeting as many voices, could be a few people working together, or it could be a bunch of online firestarters with no connection to one another, each doing their own thing. And this confusing mess is honestly sort of fun. Here's our contribution to that lore. Let's call it a Velvet Sundown cover band playing us out with a version of our theme. And yes, this was made using AI software that's available to anyone in less than 10 minutes.
- [39:28]
Kevin Maiman
Yikes.
- [39:50]
Josh Dean
Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audio Chuck. It's hosted by me, Josh Dean. This episode was written and reported by me and Joe Barrett. Our producer is Joe Barrett. Our associate producer is Emma Siminoff. Sound design by Joe Barrett and mix by Tiffany Dimmack. Themed by Ewin lytramuin and Mark McAdam. Our production manager is Ashley Warren. Campside's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Sher and me, Josh Dean. And finally, if I can ask a few favors before sending you on your way today, please rate, follow and review Chameleon on your favorite podcast platforms to help spread the word. I know everyone says this, but it's true. Ratings and reviews really do help, and if you have any feedback, tips or story ideas, you can email us@chameleonpod campsidemedia.com or leave us a message at a special number we've set up, 201-743-8368. Add a plus one if you're outside North America. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
- [40:59]
Ashley Flowers
I think Chuck would approve.
- [41:05]
Tim Boucher
Hopes. One more mask in the chameleon dance a second chance.
- [41:38]
Delia d'Ambra
Every year, millions of people head into the wilderness searching for peace, beauty and adventure. But hidden in those same scenic landscapes are stories of violence, survival and lives cut short. I'm Delia d', Ambra, and on my podcast, Park Predators, I uncover the true crimes that happened in the most amazing places on Earth. Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.