Late one night in January 2023, Cullen Moore put up a teaser and a video for a song called "Another Way," went to sleep, and mostly forgot about it. By the time he checked again it had taken off, pulling half a million TikTok views in 36 hours, and it has since run past 20 million streams. Drummer Ben Pruitt, whose drop into the chorus was in the clip that spread, went from a local band to a band people everywhere were talking about in about two days.
What sounds like an overnight story wasn't. Moore is the son of an R&B musician and an Army veteran who left the service to chase music. After a local Memphis band fizzled out, he and producer David Cowell built Sleep Theory as a studio project. Bassist Paolo Vergara came aboard after Moore saw him play Paramore's "My Heart" at a birthday party, and Ben's brother Daniel Pruitt joined on guitar and screams. Moore names Linkin Park and Michael Jackson as early loves, and Boyz II Men and the Temptations too, which explains a lot.
The Paper Hearts EP came out on Epitaph, then the debut album Afterglow in May 2025, led by "Numb." Support slots with Beartooth, Falling In Reverse and Papa Roach followed, and their first UK tour in February 2026 was upgraded three times until the London show sat in a room four times the size first booked. A covers EP of *NSYNC, Taylor Swift and Paramore songs from their live set followed in 2026, and "Giving In" arrived in October ahead of a tour with Papa Roach.