Arcade Fire is a Canadian indie rock band from Montréal, Quebec, Canada consisting of married couple Win Butler (born April 14, 1980) and Régine Chassagne (born August 18, 1977), along with Richard Reed Parry (born October 4, 1977), Butler's younger brother William Butler (born October 6, 1982), Jeremy Gara (born June 6, 1978), Sarah Neufeld (born August 27, 1979) and Tim Kingsbury.
They appeared on Saturday Night Live as the musical guests five times on the following dates:
- February 24, 2007, the fourteenth episode of Season 32, hosted by actor and NBC's The Office star Rainn Wilson. They performed "Intervention" and "Keep the Car Running" and also performed "Rebellion (Lies)" and "Wake Up" for the studio audience when the show went off-air and appeared in the SNL Digital Short.
- November 13, 2010, the sixth episode of Season 36, hosted by actress Scarlett Johansson. They performed "We Used to Wait" and "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" and appeared in the SNL Digital Short.
- They also appeared as the special guest on May 19, 2012, which is the Season 37 finale, where they performed "The Last Time", with guest host and musical guest Mick Jagger and The Strokes' bassist Nikolai Fraiture.
- September 28, 2013, which is the Season 43 premiere, hosted by longtime former cast member and head writer Tina Fey. They made their 3rd musical guest appearance and performed "Reflektor" and "Afterlife", and the three of them appeared in the "New Cast Member or Arcade Fire" sketch.
They returned to Saturday Night Live as the musical guests for 4th musical guest appearance.
- March 17, 2018, the seventeenth episode and St. Patrick's Day episode of Season 43, hosted by another longtime former cast member Bill Hader. They performed "Creature Comfort" and "Put Your Money On Me". They also appeared in the "CBC News Hour" skit.
They returned to Saturday Night Live again as the musical guests for their most recent 5th musical guest appearance.
- May 7, 2022, the nineteenth episode and the Mother's Day show of Season 47, hosted by English actor Benedict Cumberbatch. They performed "Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)", "The Lightning I, II", and "End of the Empire II" (the latter during the closing credits), making the band a five-time musical guest.
Founded in 2001 by friends and classmates Butler and Josh Deu, the band came to prominence in 2004 with the release of their critically acclaimed debut album Funeral. Their second studio album, Neon Bible, won them the 2008 Meteor Music Award for Best International Album and the 2008 Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year. Their third studio album, The Suburbs, was released in 2010 to critical acclaim and commercial success. It received many accolades, including the 2011 Grammy for Album of the Year, the 2011 Juno Award for Album of the Year and the 2011 Brit Award for Best International Album. In 2013, Arcade Fire released their fourth album, Reflektor, and scored the feature film Her, for which band members Will Butler and Owen Pallett were nominated in the Best Original Score category at the 86th Academy Awards. In 2017, the band released their fifth studio album Everything Now, which was succeeded by their sixth studio album We in 2022.
All the band's studio albums have received nominations for Best Alternative Music Album at the Grammys. Funeral is widely considered by music critics to be one of the greatest albums of the 2000s. The band's work has also been named three times as a shortlist nominee for the Polaris Music Prize: in 2007 for Neon Bible, in 2011 for The Suburbs and in 2014 for Reflektor.
The band has been described as indie rock, art rock, dance-rock, and baroque pop. They play guitar, drums, bass guitar, piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass, xylophone, glockenspiel, keyboard, synthesizer, French horn, accordion, harp, mandolin and hurdy-gurdy, and take most of these instruments on tour; the multi-instrumentalist band members switch duties throughout shows.