Interpol's Daniel Kessler

Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond · Aug 18, 2026 · 54m · transcript

Daniel Kessler grew up between London, Paris, and Washington, D.C., listening to his older brother’s early UK rock records. He picked up guitar as a teenager, the same day he quit skateboarding, and after moving to New York in the late ’90s, he set out to find musicians serious enough to start a band. In 1997, that band became Interpol and when their debut Turn on the Bright Lights came out in 2002, it helped define a new wave of New York indie bands, alongside the Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and topped Pitchfork’s year-end list.

More than two decades later, Kessler remains…