Nikolai Fraiture / The Strokes

Nikolai Fraiture is the bassist and a founding member of The Strokes.

ENCORE EPISODE — To celebrate the landmark performance The Strokes delivered at Coachella 2026, we're revisiting this conversation.

We sit down to talk about what it actually looked like from the inside of one of the most hyped band launches in rock history, and what's happened in the two decades since.

We get into the Grammy win for The New Abnormal and the making of Reality Awaits with Rick Rubin in Costa Rica — and what it took for Rubin to get a band that started in a New York basement back to playing like one.

The Strokes were the first band any of them had ever been in. After 20 years, Nikolai describes a lock-in with his bandmates that he says can't be manufactured: "I wouldn't walk away from something that special that comes along so rarely." And he's candid about early fame in a way that doesn't feel performed: "I don't think I handled it very well."

Reality Awaits is coming. This is where it started.

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