If you haven’t heard of King Neptune yet, well, you’re hardly to blame for that. Since forming a year ago, the New York-based rock outfit have played barely a handful of shows, and only last month did they release their debut single. That song, though, an exquisitely hooky blast of chugging, overdriven alt-rock titled “Black Hole,” is one of the best of 2016 so far -- and it’s only the tip of the iceberg. So consider this your opportunity to get in on the ground floor. We caught up with King Neptune mastermind Ian Kenny to get the inside scoop on the new project, and came away with 10 Things You Should Know.

Like many teenagers, Ian Kenny had rock ‘n’ roll dreams. But Kenny also had front row tickets to watch them come true.

Kenny grew up on Long Island and, as a teen, he found himself at the epicenter of the local music scene’s explosion onto the national stage. “That was the glory days of the Long Island VFW hall and church shows. That was where I started, seeing bands like Brand New and Taking Back Sunday. I grew up with the band Envy on the Coast, those were my homies.” As Kenny entered high school and began playing in his own bands, it was never a question for him of whether success was attainable -- it was simply a matter of when and how. “I started daydreaming at that age. All the bands we would play with locally, and all my friends -- it was tangible. Seeing your friends actually make waves was really inspiring.”

Now a veteran of the New York rock scene, Kenny is no stranger to the stage. But with King Neptune, he’s putting himself out there like never before.

Birthed from a bevy of songs that didn’t fit with his previous project, King Neptune isn’t the first time Kenny’s put his all into a band, but it’s the first time he’s taken the reins. “It’s kind of my solo effort,” says Kenny. “In the past, I was just a lead singer who would write my parts and let everyone do what they had to do. Now, it’s in my control.” Still, don’t expect to hear any folky acoustic strummers from King Neptune -- especially if you catch the act in concert. “I have a live band, and it’s basically the dudes I’ve always played with,” he says. “But the focus is on me.”

Not only has Kenny been around the musical block before, it’s not even the first time he’s used the name King Neptune.

“My last band did jazz versions of our songs as King Neptune and the Crustacean Army,” Kenny relates with a chuckle. “We would play local jazz fests, and I was King Neptune. So that’s where it came from. I thought it was kind of cool.” Though that band – and the jazz -- are no more, the name stuck.

While Kenny found his future in Long Island’s basement scene, his childhood friendships came from a very different place.

“I grew up in a very weird situation where I was really into music and going to shows, but I went to an all-boys Catholic school,” Kenny recalls. “I was always kind of the ‘different’ friend -- ‘oh, Ian’s thing is music’ -- but they were all into sports and things like that.” It was a delicate dance for Kenny, straddling two very different worlds, but that diversity of experiences only made his world richer in the end, and he still counts his school friends among his closest a decade later. “I have my music friends, and I have my long-time life friends, and we don’t really judge each other. I have a big range of life experiences in that sense. I wouldn’t define myself by one thing. There’s more to me than a genre or a term.”

And while Kenny might be barely old enough to remember the ‘90s, the decade made a big impact on him all the same.

“It’s less about the decade and more certain records that are from that time,” he says. “In Utero and Nevermind, Doolittle, Third Eye Blind’s self-titled. Those records I have literally been listening to the majority of my life.” In a tale as old as time (or at least as old as Almost Famous), Kenny credits a cool older sister with handing down the keys to the kingdom. “She was into that stuff, so I kind of inherited those records early on. I naturally tend to enjoy creating that kind of music. That’s where it all comes from and why I sound the way I do.”

If ‘90s alternative rock captured his heart, more mellow influences won over his head.

“Throughout high school I started getting more into indie music,” Kenny recalls. “I was into the Shins. I was a big Sufjan Stevens fan. That was where I learned how to craft a song and tell a story, through those bands. I’m a huge fan of telling stories.” For King Neptune, Kenny plumbed the depths of the scads of journals he’s kept daily for years, digging for just the right launching-off points to pair with his more muscular musical influences “I skip through things and use that as a lot of inspiration, just little thoughts I have throughout the day.”

Debut single “Black Hole” was the first track Kenny wrote specifically with King Neptune in mind. But he’s been culling from a lifetime of material for the project.

 “When I started writing for King Neptune, I had gone through a six-year relationship break-up,” he says. “‘Black Hole’ is the first song I wrote after the break-up, so it’s really straight up about that relationship and how it ended. [It’s about] when someone completely changes on you.” But the further Kenny dove into King Neptune, the further back he began to look. “I’ve been writing songs since I was 14,” he points out. Drawing from that deep well of inspiration, Kenny took the most personal bits of songs he’d written and discarded over the years and reconfigured or reconceived them. The goal: to craft songs that applied to his present as strongly as his past. It’s all unified by a common commitment to the painful truth. “It’s all me being brutally honest – with myself, or about someone else.”

Still, King Neptune might not have gotten past that first track if it hadn’t been for the encouragement of one of Kenny’s idols. 

“Black Hole” began as a tossed-off GarageBand demo -- just Kenny and an acoustic guitar, with him playing all the parts himself (including slapping the strings to simulate a drum). “I sent the demo over to [producer] Mike Sapone. He bugged out -- like ‘dude, we have to do this song right away, this is the shit!’ That was super inspiring, because I’ve loved his work with Brand New and stuff.” While Kenny has worked on King Neptune primarily with producer (and, conveniently, his roommate) Steve Kupillas, “Black Hole” features Sapone behind the boards. “His initial response really got me fired up.”

While King Neptune is a rock project, Kenny’s been building his songwriting acumen by stepping outside of his comfort zone.

When not working on his own music, Kenny’s recently found a new way to keep busy -- co-writing songs with artists in the more mainstream music world. For Kenny, co-writing isn’t just an income stream, or an opportunity to help float someone else’s boat -- it’s a way of honing his own tools that he can then apply to his own art. “I was using my experiences in those sessions writing pop songs and R&B stuff to kind of get my chops in songwriting. I wrote over 100 songs in the last year-and-a-half.” Kenny admits that you won’t likely hear those influences creep into King Neptune’s sound. Still, he credits his time in the songwriting trenches with improving his ability to structure compositions and tell the stories he wants to tell.

And if you like “Black Hole,” look out, because Kenny’s just getting started, and things only get more interesting from here.

“The next song that’s going to be out, ‘All Night,’ is just about being drunk and stupid,” laughs Kenny. “I wrote it while drunk on Christmas Eve and it’s specifically about that night, which is funny, because the song is so general that I really feel like it applies to a lot of different peoples’ nights.” Beyond “All Night,” Kenny has an album’s worth of songs written and recorded, with an eye toward releasing an album by the end of the year. “Some songs are very straightforward party songs about going out with my buds, and some songs are a little more deep, more emotive. But I wouldn’t say [the party songs] are any less meaningful. I always hide little meanings in songs.”