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Pentatonix will perform at USANA Amphitheatre on July 12.

Provided by Jiro Schneider

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Pentatonix will perform at the Maverik Center on Saturday.

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The saying goes that there’s strength in numbers. Scott Hoying would say that idea applies to his group, Pentatonix, but not in a more-the-merrier way.

At the moment, Pentatonix is going where no other a cappella group has gone popularity-wise, having broken into the pop mainstream with a series of successful EPs and albums. The group’s fall tour supporting its recently released self-titled album takes the quintet into arenas — including the Maverik Center in West Valley City on Saturday — a level of touring a cappella groups have rarely achieved.

Hoying thinks one factor that is helping Pentatonix reach such heights is that with just five members, his group is smaller than most other a cappella ensembles, which often number 10 or more vocalists.

“I think the fact that we’re only five makes it feel more like a pop group,” Hoying said in a recent phone interview. “It’s easier for fans to latch onto us because they know our personalities. And we’re a lot more social media based. So people can see what we’re doing, see where we are, follow us (online). All of that makes our fans able to connect with us a little more.”

The Pentatonix story goes back to 2011, when high school friends from Arlington, Texas, Hoying, Kirstin Maldonado and Mitch Grassi decided to audition for the NBC show “The Sing-Off.” In learning that groups needed at least five members, the trio recruited Avi Kaplan, a bass vocalist well known in a cappella circles, and Kevin “K.O.” Olusola, a singer/beat boxer they had seen on YouTube.

They formed knowing they would have just one day to rehearse for “The Sing-Off” audition — and it would be the first time all five had sung together. It was clear immediately that this combination of five vocalists was special.

“I just remember the feeling of singing with everyone for the first time,” Hoying said. “It was very magical, exciting, made my heart rate increase. It just felt so exhilarating. Yeah, it’s hard to describe, but it was an amazing experience.”

Television audiences agreed, and Pentatonix won Season 3 of “The Sing-Off” — claiming the top prize of $200,000 and a deal with Epic Records — and then prepared for the next step.

But before Pentatonix could even release an album for the label, Epic dropped the group. For the group, though, it didn’t seem like the end of the world.

“You would think we would have been really disappointed. But we kind of didn’t totally know what was going on,” Hoying said. “It was all a whirlwind. We were all like out of high school, and I don’t know, when we heard we got dropped, I remember our manager was like, ‘But we’re getting you out of the reality show contract and we’re getting you a new (record) deal. Everything is great.’ I think that positivity, we were all like, ‘Cool, we’re excited. We have fans for the first time and we have all these ideas.’ So there was so much positive going on that we really didn’t dwell on the fact that we were getting dropped from Epic.”

Hoying, though, was aware enough of how Epic viewed Pentatonix that he understood why the group didn’t fit in the label’s plans.

“I totally get it,” he said. “An a cappella group had never really, like, had a bunch of success, and all of these artists on Epic are like these pop and R&B artists that were killing it, and we were so different. So I totally get it. But it’s funny, I had a meeting with Epic and I said, ‘I know we’re so different, but I know we can be something some day and you have to have faith in that.’ And someone who worked there, I won’t name any names, but someone that worked there said to us, they were like, ‘We don’t have the time or money to have faith in something like this.’ And I got it. I was like, ‘I get it, but you’re missing out.’ “

Indeed, Pentatonix decided to make its own luck. The group got signed by Madison Gate, a small Sony-owned label that mostly released soundtracks. A debut EP, “PTX, Volume 1,” was released in June 2012, followed in November by a Christmas EP, “PTXmas.”

During this period, the group also started a YouTube channel, on which it posted videos of songs (mostly the group’s versions of hit songs like “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye, “Gangnam Style” by PSY and “We Are Young” by .fun), many of which went viral. But the big one was a medley of Daft Punk songs, which got 10 million views in the first week of its release in November 2013 and went on to top 150 million views.

With those achievements in hand, Pentatonix landed a major label deal with RCA (ironically, like Epic and Madison Gate, it’s also part of the Sony Music family), which gave the group the promotional resources to achieve even greater popularity.

After releasing the EPs, “PTX, Vo. II” in 2013 and “PTX, Vol. III” in 2014, the group returned to holiday fare for a 2014 full-length, “That’s Christmas to Me,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard album chart.

This set the stage for the self-titled album, which went to No. 1 upon its release last October.

The latest album takes Pentatonix to a new stage creatively. While the group has had a few original songs on previous releases, all but one song on “Pentatonix” is co-written by one or more of the group members.

“I think we thought it was time (to focus on originals) because we had just done a bunch of covers and we had had success in that way,” Hoying said. “We just all of a sudden had this overwhelming feeling of wanting to be more of an original artist.”

The group co-wrote with a variety of established pop songwriters hoping to bridge the worlds of a cappella and modern mainstream pop.

“Our job was to like keep the integrity and do what we do best, and then their job was pull it toward the pop world and find like a balance,” Hoying said. “And I think that’s exactly what we did.”

To that end, songs like the energetic “Sing,” “Na Na Na” and “Ref” and more relaxed tunes like “Can’t Sleep Love” and “Rose Gold” are filled with big vocal melodies, sing-along vocal accent parts, vocals mimicking what would otherwise be synth or electronic instrumental parts and even some sonically enhanced vocal beats and choir parts that help fatten up the sound. The vocal talents, though, are what stand out most, with Hoying, Maldonado and Grassi trading leads and blending on harmonies, and Kaplan and Olusola creating inventive vocal bass lines and beats.

As one would expect, a good number of songs from the self-titled album will be featured in the shows Pentatonix performs this fall. The group is also releasing a new holiday album, “A Pentatonix Christmas,” on Friday, so some of those songs should be in the shows at some point this fall. Hoying said the production this time will exceed anything fans have seen from the group in concert before.

“I think the show is going to shock a lot of people,” he said. “It gets bigger and bigger every year, and this year it’s definitely bigger and better than last year, the production, the lighting, the video content, it’s all extremely high quality and exciting. It matches up with the music so well. So it’s a visual and aural experience for everyone. And it’s just the five of us. All of the music is completely a cappella still. It’s like a cappella on steroids.”

PENTATONIX

When: Saturday at 8 p.m.

Where: Maverik Center, 3200 S. Decker Lake Dr., West Valley City

Tickets: $35-$85, available at the box office or through Ticketmaster locations (800-745-3000, www.ticketmaster.com)

Info: Call (801) 988-8888, maverikcenter.com