Auktyon or АукцЫон (Russian pronunciation: auktsɨˈon) is a Russian art rock band from Saint Petersburg. The band was founded by Leonid Fyodorov and Oleg Garkusha at the Polytechnic Institute of Leningrad. Though they originally played post-punk and new wave, the group came to be influenced by European and Central Asian folk music, avant-garde jazz, the poetry of Russian futurist Velimir Khlebnikov, and aspects of Russian high culture and literature. Auktyon was particularly popular from 1987 through 1995, but became less active in the late 1990s when Fyodorov began to produce records for Leningrad. The group continues to play together and to release new albums. They toured the United States in 2006 in support of their first US release, the album Pioneer. The group returned to the US in 2008 when they released the album Girls Sing.