BIOGRAPHY
Kurt Vile was born January 3, 1980, in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, the third of ten children raised by a poet-painter mother and an art-professor father. He picked up guitar around 2000 and began making lo-fi home recordings with future War on Drugs collaborator Adam Granduciel, the pair forming that band in 2005 with Vile on lead guitar. He departed after 2008's Wagonwheel Blues to focus on his own catalog, which already included the albums God Is Saying This to You and Constant Hitmaker. Signing to Matador Records, Vile released Childish Prodigy in 2009, followed by 2011's Smoke Ring for My Halo, which drew strong reviews (Metacritic 82, Pitchfork 8.4) and landed on Uncut's year-end list. His 2015 single "Pretty Pimpin" became his first number-one on a Billboard chart. His tenth album, Philadelphia's Been Good to Me, arrived in 2026 to further critical notice.