The Thieves

The Thieves -- brothers Hal Stokes (guitar) and Sam Stokes (bass) plus Jamie Dawson (drums) -- formed in Oxford, England, in 1999, and started snatching the British spotlight with their backward-reaching but tuneful rock soon after. Local shows and a self-produced demo prompted the BBC to come calling by the early 2000s, the catalyst for what the band thought would be a career-boosting move to California. But the Thieves didn't arrive in the U.S. riding a crest of popularity enormous enough to land them on the lips of more than a handful of stateside rock scenesters, and it wa...