The duo consists of childhood friends Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland who formed Röyksopp during the Bergen Wave.

After experimenting with different genres of electronic music, the band solidified their place in the electronica scene with their 2001 debut album, Melody A.M., released on the Wall of Sound record label.

[6] Bergen, a city of 212,944 people in 1990,[7] had overtaken Tromsø's position as the most vital scene for underground electronic music in Norway, and Röyksopp worked with other Norwegian musicians like Frost, Those Norwegians, Drum Island, and Kings of Convenience's guitarist and singer Erlend Øye in what was called the Bergen Wave.

[2] Under the tutelage of Jenssen, the duo started a band called Aedena Cycle with Gaute Barlindhaug and Kolbjørn Lyslo.

[2] After recording as part of Aedena Cycle, Berge and Brundtland left the group to form their own band, Röyksopp.

[14] The album peaked at number one in Norway,[15] and produced the UK Top 40 singles "Eple", "Poor Leno", and "Remind Me".

"Remind Me", one of the two Röyksopp and Erlend Øye collaborations found on Melody A.M., was featured in a Geico car insurance commercial, the fourth of the "It's so easy a caveman could do it" ads.

[37] On the tenth anniversary of Röyksopp's formation—15 December 2008—the band released a new track, "Happy Birthday", free of charge to celebrate the event.

[24] The music video for "Happy Up Here", made by Reuben Sutherland, features elements from the arcade game Space Invaders.

[40] "The Girl and the Robot", the second single from the album Junior, featuring vocals from Swedish singer Robyn, was released on 15 June 2009.

[41] The vinyl and digital versions of the single included remixes of the song by Kris Menace, Chateau Marmont and Spencer & Hill.

[15] In January 2013, Röyksopp released a song called "Running to the Sea", a collaboration with Norwegian artist Susanne Sundfør.

[49] The single was released on 16 December 2013,[needs update] with a B-side containing a song called "Something in My Heart", featuring Jamie McDermott from The Irrepressibles.

On 29 September 2014, Röyksopp announced that their next album, titled The Inevitable End, would explore "darker subject matter with emphasis on the lyrical content", and would be their last LP, though they will not stop making music.

[54] In early 2015, it was announced that the band had composed a musical accompaniment to a comedic work based upon the novels of Franz Kafka.

[55] On 8 February 2016, Röyksopp announced that a new track titled "Bounty Hunters" would be included on the Star Wars Headspace compilation.

[58][59] In February 2019, the band announced that they would be releasing B-sides, exclusives and previously unreleased tracks through the Lost Tapes playlist, starting with "I Wanna Know" and "Rising Urge".

Through a series of teasers with the tagline "Press R" on social media and snippets of new material on the redesigned official website,[66] the band confirmed a new project would be released in 2022, titled Profound Mysteries.

[67] Röyksopp described the "conceptual project" as an "expanded creative universe" and a "continuous, holistic experience", suggesting the release of three albums in 2022 (listed on the website as red, yellow and green).

[70][74] A number of individual songs were released in a run-up to the third and final album, starting with "Speed King" and "The Night" in August 2022.

Profound Mysteries III was released on 18 November 2022 and features collaborations with Jamie Irrepressible, Alison Goldfrapp, Susanne Sundfør and Astrid S, among other artists.

[77] The True Electric tour began in February 2023, with shows in European cities, including Stockholm, London and Berlin.

[78] The band described the tour as "energetic beats meet vast, transcending soundscapes" and explained their wish to bring "the pure and immersive Röyksopp experience" of studio productions to the stage.

[1] Röyksopp prefer to use analogue synthesizers over digital ones,[1][5] with Svein Berge noting in an interview that "it's fairly limited, the fun you can have with the use of a mouse.

[89] To further create their unique sound, the band makes use of the Roland Space Echo, "an old Danish tube compressor that doesn’t really have a name," and a reverb unit taken from an old radio station.

The band has also expressed their interest in the music of Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Giorgio Moroder, Art of Noise, Vangelis, Erik Satie, and Francis Lai.

[1] Svein Berge has also stated that he is very fond of the production and programming skills of Datassette, who produced a remix of the Röyksopp single "Happy Up Here".

Marc Hogan of Pitchfork Media said that "Those who have heard Röyksopp's two albums ... won't be surprised to learn the Norwegian duo's live set is much better and more raucuous than hunching next to the speakers at yer [sic] local Crate & Barrel".

Ari Stein, of Electronic Beats, said, that during one particular live set, "Röyksopp returned with two separate encores, one which included Berge playing "Eple" with a space suit capsule on his head".

"[99] Pitchfork Media, in their review of Senior, said that "the kind of downtempo stuff that makes up the majority of Röyksopp's vocal-less compositions just doesn't hold up to concentrated, repeated listens like many other forms of instrumental electronic music.