Lerche met with
Oslo-based manager Tatiana Penzo, leading up to a deal with
Virgin Norway signed in 2000. His popularity in his home country increased steadily, and, in 2000, he recorded his debut album,
Faces Down.
Faces Down was not released until 2001, after Lerche finished schooling.
Faces Down was a hit in Norway and received critical praise in
Norway and the United States —
Rolling Stone Magazine placed it in their top 50 albums of 2002. He released the live/studio collection ''
Don't Be Shallow EP
the following year. Devon Powers of Popmatters'' praised Sondre's "contagious musical sensibilities, exhilarating vigor and downright stupefying songcraft," and noted that "Lerche manages to both push himself and maintain an allegiance to his ways – something artists twice his age have trouble doing." On 27 February 2006,
Duper Sessions was released. The jazz album was recorded in the fall of 2005 with his band the Faces Down and pianist Erik Halvorsen at Duper Studios in
Bergen. The album reached No. 21 on the
Billboard Jazz Albums chart. His February 2007 release,
Phantom Punch, is a rock album with a more aggressive sound than his previous work. Lerche and the Faces Down recorded and mixed the album in Los Angeles in April and May 2006, with producer
Tony Hoffer. In September 2009, Lerche released
Heartbeat Radio, to critical acclaim. While it maintained the studio polish of his groundbreaking debut, there was also a sense of musical adventure that mixed acoustic guitars with grand gestures of orchestral pop, elements of 1950s Jazz, 1960s and 1970s Brazilian psych-folk, and state-of-the-art 1980s pop masters such as
Prefab Sprout,
Scritti Politti and
Fleetwood Mac. In his review, Mikael Wood of the
Los Angeles Times wrote, "No matter what genre he's working in – fuzzy garage rock, breezy vocal jazz, acoustic folk-pop – this young Norwegian singer-songwriter crafts catchier choruses than many musicians who’ve been working twice as long as he has." Allmusic Guide's Tim Sendra called
Heartbeat Radio Sondre's "best work to date." In June 2011, Lerche released the self-titled
Sondre Lerche, on his own Mona Records. Praised by
Rolling Stone,
The New York Times,
Stereogum,
Filter,
Spin, and
Entertainment Weekly among others for its experimentation with contrasting musical sounds, this eponymous album contains Lerche's most interesting arrangements and catchy songwriting to date, but also some of his most somber and introspective. In the studio, Lerche wanted to explore his new creative alliances in Williamsburg, the Brooklyn neighborhood where he's lived on and off for the previous six years. The album was released on 23 September 2014 on Mona Records. "Bad Law" was released as the main single for the album in May 2014, supported by a music video released that June. On 24 November that year the songs from
Pleasure were also released in a stripped down solo version titled
Solo Pleasure.
Solo Pleasure was released digitally on 14 February 2018. In April 2022, Lerche released a double album,
Avatars of Love. ==Other ventures==