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 | | Mixing electronic polish with guitar-driven hooks à la Phoenix and the Postal Service, Bangor and Donaghadee, Northern Ireland's Two Door Cinema Club feature singer/guitarist/programmer Alex Trimble, guitarist/singer Sam Halliday, and bassist/singer Kevin Baird. |
 | | Another example of how influential blogs can be in a band's career, sharp-edged Australian indie rockers Atlas Genius experienced a massive surge in their popularity when their song "Trojans" was featured by the site Neon Gold, resulting in offers from record labels and over 45,000 downloads in the U. |
 | | Much like Iron & Wine and similar indie outfits, Sea Wolf is the project name of a sole singer/songwriter who drafts in other musicians as the occasion warrants. |
 | | England's Animal Kingdom craft dreamy and emotive stadium pop songs that echo the works of similarly atmospheric modern rock acts like Mercury Rev. |
 | | Spirited, quirky Cincinnati, Ohio-based indie rockers Walk the Moon formed in the late 2000s around the talents of Nicholas Petricca, Kevin Ray, Sean Waugaman, and Eli Maiman. |
 | | Atmospheric English indie pop group the xx formed in London in 2008 around the talents of Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim, Baria Qureshi, and Jamie Smith, when the bandmembers were still in high school. |
 | | Standing firmly on the middle ground between the quirky, staccato attack of Modest Mouse and the spirited, arena-ready roar of Arcade Fire, Los Angeles-based indie rock outfit Grouplove came to fruition in the late 2000s around the talents of Hannah Hooper, Christian Zucconi, Sean Gadd, Ryan Rabin, and Andrew Wessen. |
 | | Brazilian-bred/American-born siblings Erica and Bruce Driscoll compose the sultry indie pop of Astaire. |
 | | Genre-crossing outfit the Neighbourhood mix atmospheric indie rock, electronica, and hip-hop beats with melodic R&B-inflected vocals. |
 | | Cut from the same colorful cloth as upbeat indie pop contemporaries like Fun., Jukebox the Ghost, Walk the Moon, and Imagine Dragons, Youngblood Hawke, named after a 1961 Herman Wouk novel based on the life of Thomas Wolfe, was formed in 2011 by former members of new wave revivalists Iglu and Hartly. |
 | | The Boston, Massachusetts-based Passion Pit began as a one-man project of singer and songwriter Michael Angelakos to produce a Valentine's Day gift for his girlfriend. |
 | | After spending several years with the post-punk outfit Sidecar Kisses, vocalist/guitarist Ritzy Bryan and bassist Rhydian Dafydd left the lineup and launched the Joy Formidable, drawing heavily from shoegaze and noisy alt-rock to create their new group's sound. |
 | | Metric are a band with an eclectic, adventurous outlook, whose music encompasses elements of synth pop, new wave, dance-rock, and electronica and whose hometown has vacillated between Toronto, Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, and London over the course of the group's existence. |
 | | Playing clever but purposefully naïve pop in the manner of the Vaselines, the Twilight Sad, and the Clean, Frightened Rabbit sound a good bit bolder than their moniker would suggest, though it suits their lively but nervous musical personality. |
 | | Keyboardist Matt Johnson and drummer Kim Schifino create the giddy, punky pop music of Matt and Kim. |
 | | English indie rockers Alt-J, named for the triangle that appears when pressing "Alt" and "J" on a Mac, formed in 2008 under the moniker FILMS. |
 | | The Lumineers, a folk-rock trio out of Denver, Colorado, deliver an acoustic-based Americana sound that touches a lot of stylistic bases, from folk to gospel to heartland rock and the narrative end of country, all with interesting rhythmic twists and turns. |
 | | It’s too facile to call the Black Keys counterparts of the White Stripes: they share several surface similarities -- their names are color-coded, they hail from the Midwest, they’re guitar-and-drum blues-rock duos -- but the Black Keys are their own distinct thing, a tougher, rougher rock band with a purist streak that never surfaces in the Stripes. |
 | | British indie rock trio the Wombats make driving guitar post-punk and electronic-influenced pop. Formed in Liverpool in 2003 while the members were all attending the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, the Wombats feature vocalist/guitarist Matthew Murphy, drummer Dan Haggis, and Norwegian-born bassist Tord Øverland-Knudsen. |
 | | Formed in 2008, Local Natives craft their dramatic and eclectic brand of indie rock from their home base in Los Angeles, California. |
 | | Formed in 2008 by singer/songwriter/guitarist Tim Bruns and mandolin player Michael Morter, Denver, Colorado-based indie folk-rock outfit Churchill expanded to a sextet by the time of the group's 2009 live debut, fleshing out Bruns' rustic, Americana-tinged tales of love, life, and loss with cello, piano, bass, and drums. |
 | | A British singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist (piano, trumpet, guitar, bass, drums, and organ among them), Dan Croll combines blending folk elements and classic Paul Simon-like melodies with electronic beats, African polyrhythms, and guitar hooks, giving his work a lot of varying sounds and dimensions. |
 | | With their choir boy vocals and panoramic pop/rock sound, the Temper Trap began building an audience in Melbourne, Australia, where the band first rose to local acclaim after playing St. |
 | | As led by singer/songwriter/guitarist Andy Hull, the maturity of Manchester Orchestra's songwriting belied the fact that the bandmembers were barely legal when their group sprung into existence. |
 | | New Zealand indie electronic ensemble the Naked and Famous make driving, melodic pop with an '80s post-punk influence. |
 | | Inspired by folk, rock, country, and bluegrass, the London-based Mumford & Sons feature singer/guitarist/drummer Marcus Mumford, vocalist and banjo/Dobro player Winston Marshall, vocalist/keyboardist Ben Lovett, and vocalist/bassist Ted Dwane. |
 | | A solo project of Aaron Bruno, AWOLNATION began as a creative outlet for the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. |
 | | Formed in Harlow in 2008, the Essex five-piece Morning Parade consists of lead vocalist Steve Sparrow, guitarist Chad Thomas, bassist Phil Titus, keyboardist Ben Giddings, and drummer Andy Hayes. |
 | | Brian Aubert (guitar/vocals), Nikki Monninger (bass), Christopher Guanlao (drums), and Joe Lester (keyboards) comprise the swarthy indie rock stylings of Silversun Pickups. |
 | | A classic guitar pop group almost nine years in the making, Albuquerque, New Mexico's the Shins began in 1997 as the side project of singer/songwriter and guitarist James Mercer's primary band, Flake. |
 | | Hailing from Leeds, England, and taking their name from the ridge that overlooks their home borough of Otley, West Yorkshire, spirited indie rock outfit the Chevin blend the eclectic arrangements of the Guillemots with the stadium-sized delivery of the Killers. |
 | | After winning the nationwide 2010 battle-of-the-bands competition Musiktilraunir in their native Iceland, six-piece chamber pop group Of Monsters and Men were hailed as "the new Arcade Fire" in Rolling Stone magazine. |
 | | Assembling in the late '90s, in the town of Kilmarnock, near Glasgow, Scotland, Biffy Clyro featured a three-piece lineup, fronted by vocalist and guitarist Simon Neil along with James Johnston (bass) and drummer Ben Johnston. |
 | | Folk-rock duo Tegan and Sara first burst onto the Canadian music scene in 1998, when they earned the highest score in history at Calgary's "Garage Warz" competition; their quick rise didn't stop, for their melodic acoustics and charming stage personas led to a slew of dates with Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair that same year and a record deal with Neil Young's Vapor Records in April 2000. |
 | | London's electro-indie pop quintet Citizens! feature singer Tom Burke, keyboardist Lawrence Diamond, drummer Michael Evans, bassist Martyn Richmond, and guitarist Thom Rhoades. |
 | | Las Vegas-based indie rockers Imagine Dragons formed in Provo, Utah in 2009. Like their desert-born stadium rock contemporaries the Killers, Imagine Dragons blend engaging, synth-based dance-pop with emotionally charged, Brit-pop-inspired alt-rock. |
 | | Although this psychedelic art pop quartet formed in Dalston, London at the end of 2008, they had met earlier in the decade at the Edinburgh College of Art. |
 | | The handclapping indie pop of Freelance Whales was born on the streets and subways of New York City after the band's formation in Queens at the end of 2008. |
 | | Combining indie rock with chamber pop flourishes (courtesy of a small string section), Ra Ra Riot formed while the band's six members were attending college in Syracuse, New York. |
 | | Rambunctious Danish indie rockers New Politics formed in the late 2000s around the talents of vocalist David Boyd, guitarist/vocalist/keyboard player Søren H, and drummer Poul Amaliel. |
 | | Formed by novelist Mikel Jollett during a tumultuous period in his life, the Airborne Toxic Event (named after a section in American author Don DeLillo's novel White Noise) combine literate indie rock with real literary cred. |
 | | Formerly known as the Jakes, Young the Giant began making eclectic indie rock in Irvine, CA, where bandmates Sameer Gadhia (vocals), Jacob Tilley (guitar), Eric Cannata (guitar), Payam Doostzadeh (bass), and Francois Comtois (drummer) all met each other during high school. |
 | | Los Angeles indie electro unit Capital Cities first came together as a duo of composer/songwriters Ryan Merchant and Sebu Simonian. |
 | | The witty, funky pop duo Electric Guest feature Asa Taccone (brother of Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone) and Matthew Compton. |
 | | Hailing from South London, Florence Mary Leontine Welch writes songs that occupy the same confessional territory as gossip-loving, genre-bending contemporaries like Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash, Adele, and Lily Allen and the moody, classic art rock of Kate Bush, blending pop, soul, and baroque arrangements into a sound that earned the young artist considerable buzz in 2007. |
 | | A combination of indie rock muscle and theatrical, unapologetic bombast turned Arcade Fire into indie royalty in the early 2000s. |
 | | The French group Phoenix draw elements from their eclectic '80s upbringing to arrive at a satisfying blend of rock and synthesizers. |
 | | Muse's fusion of progressive rock, glam, electronica, and Radiohead-influenced experimentation is crafted by guitarist/vocalist Matthew Bellamy, bassist Chris Wolstenholme, and drummer Dominic Howard. |
 | | Pomegranates hail from Cincinnati, OH, where drummer Jacob Merritt, guitarist Isaac Karns, and vocalist/guitarist Joey Cook launched the pop-based indie rock band in 2006. |
