Twenty One Pilots Drummer’s New Custom Indian Scout Is A Stunner

Many people know Josh Dun as the dynamic drummer from the Grammy Award-winning duo Twenty One Pilots, a band that redefined modern music with electric sound and electrifying performances. However, few are aware of another side of this multi-talented musician – His deep-seated love for motorcycles.

Participating in Indian Motorcycle’s FORGED custom build program, Dun was the recipient of an all-new, custom 2025 Indian Scout that was built and designed from renowned bike builder Roland Sands and Roland Sands Design (RSD).

Indian Motorcycle understands that true artistry extends beyond the stage, which is why they tapped Roland Sands and RSD to create this one-of-a-kind bike for Josh Dun. Sands is a well-known motorcycle designer, having built bikes for celebrities like Mickey Rourke and Weeman, among many others. He’s also a former pro racer, so he’s keen on building machines that go, stop and handle, as much as they look badass.

Revealed in the video above, we see Roland Sands and his fabricator Aaron Boss present this rowdy bike to its new owner Dun. For the first build of this year’s FORGED custom series, Boss and Sands brought their vision to life for a high-performance machine inspired by the legacy of first-ever Daytona 200 winner Ed “Iron Man” Kretz. A streetable west-coast performance cruiser with racing cues and components throughout.

The first of three creations by renowned builders creating unique customs around the all-new Indian Scout platform, the RSD Indian Scout is a testament to that which Roland Sands Design does best, taking cruisers and turning them into high-performance bikes.

“What makes an RSD bike is taking a machine and elevating it. We’ve always taken cruisers and made them into sport bikes. This bike has that RSD silhouette, but the cool thing was how easy it was to make the new Scout fit the RSD mold,” said Roland Sands.

Each FORGED build is rooted in a historical figure, machine, or era of inspiration taken from Scout’s storied 100+ year history, RSD selected Ed “Iron Man” Kretz as the inspiration for their build. With his attitude of never giving up, and as a builder of many high-performance Indian Motorcycle race bikes, the RSD team felt a natural affinity with Kretz.

“It was like, well, OK, what would Ed build today? A rowdy race bike,” Sands commented.

Bringing the ‘Iron Man’ racing spirit to the 2025 Sport Scout, RSD took advantage of their vast experience of making Scout and FTR flat track racers to build a performance street bike Kretz would be proud of.

For enhanced ride and handling, the Sport Scout’s front end was adapted and upgraded to FTR front forks and triple clamps with high-performance braking achieved with the switch to dual discs and radial-mount Brembo brake calipers. Similarly, the rear end was modified to accept an FTR swingarm mated to Indian piggyback shocks and a Brembo rear caliper. Connecting the performance suspension and braking to the street, the RSD Scout now runs on 17-inch wheels by RSD Dymag with stickier Dunlop Sportmax Q5s rubber allowing the full potential of the upgrades to be exploited.

Aaron Boss said, “From there, it’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that such as modifying the front fairing to hook onto the new forks and modifying the stock foot controls for a more street bike riding position. With the engine dialled in from the factory already, I fabricated a full custom titanium exhaust, and the basis of the tail was the original design of RSD’s flat track tail for previous generation Scouts. But we’ve amped it up with new sides and an undertail tire hugger.”

Finished with custom seat from Saddlemen and a bold black and yellow color scheme, there was one last touch in dedication to Ed Kretz. Staring defiantly back from under the tail is the image of Sylvester the cat that the team found in the archives on Kretz’s business card during the first episode of the series.

Relatively new to the world of motorcycles, Dun had previously ridden an FTR and had chosen an Indian Scout Bobber for his first bike.

“Walking into that bike shop for the first time, I was pretty much a blank canvas. in terms of like, what’s my style? What do I like? So I walked around, looked at everything and narrowed it down to two bobber-style bikes. Ultimately, I was just like, it’s gotta be the Indian Scout.”

On first seeing the RSD Scout, Dun was immediately impressed. “Wow. This thing’s perfect. The colors are perfect. This whole thing makes sense. 100% it’s a bike I’d personally own. How do you design a bike that makes you feel like a badass? I think that’s the formula right there.”

Roland Sands and RSD absolutely knocked it out of the park with this bad boy, and I can’t wait to see what they do for the next one!