Penelope Road takes its name from the West End street where two of its members, Max Moore and James Kopp, lived together — the house doubled as the band's rehearsal space and recording studio for a full year before anything else came together.
The other three members, Koan Roy-Meighoo, Charles Eastman, and Anthony Smith, came in through Atlanta high school music programs, and the five-piece built a following the unglamorous way, posting a stripped-down snippet that pulled in roughly two million views before "Out Tonight" — recorded at Little Five Points' Diamond Street Studios and pulling as much from Steely Dan and Hall & Oates as from Mk.gee — landed them a Warner Records deal.