With soothing folk rock that sounded like an undiscovered gem from the 1960s, Velvet Sundown quickly became a hit on Spotify.

After releasing their debut album, Floating on Echoes on June 5, the band quickly reached number one on the music streaming app’s daily viral chart in the UK, Sweden and Norway.

But now the band, which has 1.1 million monthly listeners, has now admitted that their music was actually created using AI as part of an “art hoax”.

The band has since amended their bio on their Spotify page to admit they are a “synthetic music project guided by human creative direction”.

The band’s two albums, which came out within weeks of each other, were not a “trick” but intended as a “mirror”, said the creators.

Velvet Sundown was an “ongoing artistic provocation”, they said.