Kensington (band)

Kensington is a Dutch rock band from Utrecht that was formed in 2005. The band consists of lead vocalist Jason Dowd, guitarist Casper Starreveld, bassist Jan Haker and drummer Niles Vandenberg. The band has four number-one albums in the Netherlands and three Platinum-certified albums.

Former lead vocalist Eloi Youssef was in the band from 2006 to 2022. He departed following a series of six sold-out farewell concerts at Amsterdam's Ziggo Dome. The American-born Dowd was named as his successor in 2025.

De Volkskrant in 2023 named Kensington "the most successful Dutch rock band of the last fifteen years". From 2015 to Youssef's final show in 2022, the band sold out the Ziggo Dome 19 consecutive times, leading them to be dubbed the arena's "house band". Kensington also performed the largest concert by a Dutch rock band in the country's history when they sold out the Johan Cruyff Arena in 2018 with 51,000 tickets.

Biography

Early years (2005–2008)

Before Kensington, guitarist Casper Starreveld, bassist Jan Haker and drummer Lucas Lenselink played together as Quad, for a secondary school assignment at Montessori Lyceum Herman Jordan in Zeist. In 2005, they became Kensington and added Eloi Youssef in 2006. Their first releases were a two-song promo single An Introduction To... and the five-song Kensington EP in 2007. This self-produced EP was recorded in the Second Moon Studio of Dutch folk singer Hessel van der Kooij, on the island of Terschelling, and was mixed and mastered by Martijn Groeneveld in the Mailmen Studios in Utrecht.