Photo courtesy Michael Lavine

Editor's Note: This story first appeared in its original format in the Winter 2014 issue of Variance. Click here for the full version.

Sometimes in a small college town like Ithaca, N.Y., there's nothing but trouble for kids to get into. But X Ambassadors frontman Sam Harris, his brother Casey and childhood friend Noah Feldshuh instead turned to music in middle school and managed to create some magic.

Now, they're on a national tour with Panic! At the Disco, navigating their first deal with Interscope Records, and being mentored by the same genius that brought us Imagine Dragons, Alex Da Kid.

Having made the pilgrimage to New York City after high school, the Harris brothers and Feldshuh connected with drummer Adam Levin in college to secure their R&B-flushed take on alt-pop.

"It's been a steady grind, and when we look at it every year, we have gotten further than we were the year before," Harris explains. "A year ago, we didn’t have a record deal; we didn’t have anything new out, really. We had an EP that had been out for a year and we were sort of figuring out what the next step was, and the deal with Alex [Da Kid] and Interscope all sort of fell together. It was a year before that we really had nothing. We had just started to build our team of people; we had only just gotten a booking agent, just gotten management."

Though the band's proverbial nose has only been to the grindstone since 2010, in today's music culture fueled by YouTube, social media and countless iterations of online radio, three years can feel like a lifetime. How fast a band moves from open mics to the AMAs is now a common measure of success. But Harris seems to have seen past that, undeterred.

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"Every year it builds and builds and builds, and you just have to look at it as a slow and steady wins the race kind of thing. And it's hard. It’s really hard," he admits. "Especially when you see so many other artists coming up so fast ...You have to wonder, if it doesn't happens so fast for you, are you doing something wrong? What's going on? Should I be making a different kind of music? Is the whole thing worth it?

"All these questions run through your head, and you kind of have to shut it all out because it's such a game – it's such a crapshoot, really. The only thing you can do is continue to write the best music that you possibly can. This is the music that we're making, and we're really proud of it. We work really hard at it, and that's all we can do."

Even though a meteoric rise to chart-topping success is only a byproduct of hard work and not the end game, being groomed by the guys who helped launch Imagine Dragons into the spotlight can't hurt. Frontman Dan Reynolds of the band who brought us "Radioactive" last year heard X Ambassadors' broody tribal-rock single, "Unconsolable," on Virginia's alternative radio station, liked what he heard, and made a suggestion to Alex Da Kid. From there, preparation just met opportunity.

But X Ambassadors' discovery raises an important question: Does radio still have power to bring music to the masses? Harris thinks so.

"Living in New York, you get so obsessed with the blog world because that is how a lot of new music is being discovered. But to the rest of the country, radio is still a big, big thing," Harris acknowledges. "Even in L.A. when we're driving around, the radio is always on and that's where I hear a lot of stuff for the first time. I think it's still very much a powerful tool.

"I would love to see more radio stations taking more chances on these alternative up-and-coming bands. There are some stations that really are still doing that. It's great to see that radio can still have a hand in breaking bands."

But it's definitely not a magic bullet, Harris explains. "It's not just one thing or the other that's going to do it for you. You’re not going to get a song on the radio unless you're getting a bunch of placements in trailers or commercials or if your songs are on blogs. But you're not going to get placements in trailers or put on blogs if you don't have some other story going on. It's all intertwined. So again, you just have to keep making cool shit. People will see that and they will respond to it. It's as simple as that."

The mantra "timing is everything" applies. And that's where X Ambassadors stand today: ready with a lineup of really great songs, waiting for the perfect moment to catch lightning in a bottle.

"We've been cultivating this sound, this kind of alternative, R&B, soul, kind of tribal thing that we really want to take to the next level," Harris explains. "We all grew up listening to pop music. We listened to what was on the radio: hip-hop, R&B, a lot of stuff that was carefully crafted to be accessible to young kids. Then later on, we all got involved in indie rock and a lot of stuff that was more under the radar. We want to try to apply the sensibility that we grew up having ingrained in us to this really eclectic sound that we're trying to capture."

This sound includes all kinds of outside-the-rock-box instrumentation, including saxes and horns, Sam's vocals—at times thick and just the right kind of raspy and at times in pristine falsetto—and a blend of influences that reflect the ever-evolving face of pop music.

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X Ambassadors' new The Reason EP is out now. For tour dates and information, click here.