Tame Impala are one of Australia’s biggest musical exports, with their world-conquering Currents earning a place as one of the best releases Australian releases of the last decade, after arriving on a colossal tidal wave of momentum generated by the success and critical acclaim yielded by their previous two releases, Innerspeaker and Lonerism, which made the Perth group one of Australia’s biggest bands.

With Kevin Parker now producing albums for Lady Gaga and making music with Mark Ronson, it’s almost hard to picture them as just a gang of struggling young musicians playing small festivals and club gigs around Perth, barely able to draw anyone’s attention – but maybe these recently resurfaced videos will help.

Before they were releasing the biggest Aussie album of the year and getting billed one place behind AC/DC at Coachella, in 2008, Tame Impala were a struggling band playing to a sparse crowd at the Wave Rock Weekender near Hyden in Western Australia.

As readers can see in the footage below, there wasn’t a huge turnout for the band (those days are well behind them) and most of the audience is sitting down on the grass. Even the cameraman decides to ditch the show after a few minutes.

There’s also footage of Kevin Parker and co performing at fellow WA festival Rollercoaster, where the crowd was slightly more animated (they were standing up, at least) as the band work through a rendition of ‘Desire Be Desire Go’, which would later appear on Innerspeaker and their self-titled EP.

By the end of 2008, the band had released that EP and would go on to nab a spot at Falls Festival. However, even then no one thought the band would blow up the way they did. We’re pretty sure even the band members didn’t see that one coming.

This article has been republished from an earlier date