Lyons Lane is a five-piece Detroit rock band led by songwriter and vocalist Mark Leo, who started writing songs and playing in bands at age eight and grew up feeling like something of an outcast for gravitating toward Little Richard while his classmates listened to more contemporary sounds. He met musical partner Thomas “Tomcat” Thompson in high school, and the two bonded instantly over a shared love of rockabilly and doo-wop, spending their early years together grinding through four-hour dive bar gigs built mostly around 1950s covers. The lineup eventually grew to include Darrian Loehne on guitar, Matty Stevens on tenor saxophone, and Shane Wheeler on drums, rounding the band out into the full, horn-driven sound it’s known for today. Their debut EP, “You’ll Talk About It!,” arrives September 25th on vinyl, streaming platforms, and digital download.
You’ll Talk About It!
The EP was recorded over two years at Rustbelt Studios in Royal Oak, Michigan, the same studio that helped launch fellow Michigan act Greta Van Fleet, working alongside producer and early believer Jake Halkey. Lyons Lane blends rockabilly, doo-wop, and mid-century Americana with a distinctly modern alternative edge, an approach the band has described as vintage without nostalgia and modern without abandoning the past.
Their breakout moment came from an unlikely source: a cover of “Love Potion No. 9” that racked up millions of views across Instagram and Facebook, splitting audiences between listeners hearing the song for the first time and longtime fans of the original comparing the two versions. Short clips of that cover invited easy comparisons to other modern alternative acts, but a full listen makes clear the band has carved out a sound of its own. That viral moment sparked a genuine grassroots following, fan accounts, fan art, and fan letters arriving while Mark Leo was still working at a pizza place in Metro Detroit, and the momentum has since built toward nearly two million Spotify streams and a sold-out hometown show at Ferndale’s historic Magic Bag Theatre, the same venue where a young White Stripes once celebrated their own debut album.
Ahead of the EP, the band’s already released “Emma’s Addiction,” a retro-fitted track that leans hard into 60s energy and vocal spunk, built on old-school instrumentation and crooner-style vocal inflections that make it feel like a genuine trip back in time. The song comes across as soulful and sharp, with great horn work, tight production, and a cinematic pop quality that gives it real transportive power. The accompanying music video, directed by Ryan Homrocky and Luke Madorski, leans into that same throwback storytelling energy that’s become a Lyons Lane signature.
Thematically, “You’ll Talk About It!” digs into love, loss, obsession, and ego in roughly equal measure, handled with real wit alongside genuine sincerity. The EP opens with “Don’t Shoot The Messenger,” which introduces the band’s storytelling style immediately through a wry, uncomfortable narrative about a man confessing to another man that his girlfriend cheated on him, with the messenger himself.
Final Thoughts
“You’ll Talk About It!” looks like a strong introduction to a band that’s already built real momentum the old-fashioned way, through packed rooms and word of mouth rather than a single viral clip, and “Emma’s Addiction” is a strong early sign of what’s to come. It arrives September 25th on vinyl, streaming platforms, and digital download, and you can presave it now at too.fm/pe54jq9. Follow Lyons Lane on Instagram and Facebook.
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