Ben McKee

Ben McKee is an American bass player for Imagine Dragons, the pop rock group he joined in 2009 after Wayne Sermon invited him. Raised in Forestville, California, he learned acoustic guitar and violin as a child, took up acoustic bass in fifth grade, and later attended Berklee College of Music, where he played in a guitar performance ensemble with Wayne Sermon and Daniel Platzman. McKee left Berklee in his final semester to join the band, and he brought in Platzman on drums to complete the lineup. The group played almost nightly as a lounge act in Las Vegas, earned local honors, and signed with Interscope Records in 2011. Its 2012 debut album Night Visions reached number two on the Billboard 200, and the single Radioactive won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance. Later albums include Smoke + Mirrors (2015), Evolve (2017), Origins (2018), Mercury: Acts 1 and 2 (2022) and Loom (2024).