 | | Led by Montana native Colin Meloy, the Decemberists craft theatrical, hyper-literate pop songs that draw heavily from late-'60s British folk acts like Fairport Convention and Pentangle and the early-'80s college rock grandeur of the Waterboys and R. |
 | | Leslie Feist -- best known simply as Feist -- was a respected member of the Canadian alternative music community before becoming an international pop sensation with the success for her albums Let It Die and The Reminder. |
 | | A violently energetic amalgam of fractured punk rock and vintage video game sound effects, Polysics gained recognition quickly due to their spastic live shows and trademark uniforms: matching orange or yellow boiler suits, straight-bar sunglasses, and badges stamped with the letter P. |
 | | Attempting to stand out among your peers when you practice your art in the rather insane world of Japanese pop/rock/punk is no mean feat, but New York City based Peelander-Z certainly made some serious waves. |
 | | Omaha, NE's the Faint have gone through countless changes in their relatively short career, but with each shift, both in terms of personnel and style, they have made a distinct new impression and turned more and more heads. |
 | | Eat Sugar are a electro-rock band based out of Cincinnati, OH. After disbanding Chalk in 2005, Greg Poneris and Jim Reynolds teamed up with vocalist Aidan Bogosian and keyboardist Michael McBride to record a self-titled EP. |
 | | Broken Spindles is the lo-fi electronic solo project of bassist Joel Peterson, the founding member of Omaha, NE‘s The Faint. |
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 | | Noisy dance-pop duo Coltrane Motion began collaborating in 2000 in a small Ohio town before relocating to Chicago to establish their career. |
 | | Clarke Foley (vocals/bass), Adam Manning (guitar), Dan Leo (drums), and Mark Thomas Kluepfel (vocals/keyboards) create the sharp, moody dance-punk stylings of Action Action. |
 | | Beginning as a noisy, synth-based combo in 1999, Victoria, British Colombia's Hot Hot Heat evolved into an aggressively catchy indie rock band two years later, when keyboardist Steve Bays took on the vocal duties, and guitarist Dante DeCaro joined their ranks. |
 | | Based in Castle Donington and formed by 16- and 17-year-olds in 2004, Late of the Pier are an indie electro band unique to their scene and one that is incredibly difficult to pinpoint. |
 | | Blending digital-age pop/rock with ambient electronics, the Nashville-based Paper Route had their start in the summer of 2004, when Chad Howat began staying up all night in his apartment while making music with a variety of instruments and programmed samples. |
 | | Studied up on the post-punk and new wave movements of the '80s, the Aeffect fell in line with bands like the Faint with their own pulsing synths, moody vocals, and electronic touches. |
 | | Boston's Pretty & Nice got their start several hours northwest in Burlington, Vermont, where musician Holden Lewis met engineer/musician Jeremy Mendicino in 2004 and the two proceeded to record what would become the band's debut, Pink & Blue. |
 | | New York City based Jesse Cohen(keyboards, samples, fake drums), Andy Craven(drums), Michael Bell-Smith(vocals, percussion, bass, keys), and Tony Plunkett(bass) formed in 2004 as Professor Murder. |
 | | Aggressive indie rock/electro duo Fang & Darling, who hail from Berlin, forgo songs about love and loss and instead tread the line between existentialism and raging party music. |
 | | Chicago-based indie electronic duo Walter Meego began when Colin Yarck and Justin Sconza met at the University of Illinois in 1999. |
 | | Brothers Alex and Giovanni Guillen formed Los Angeles’ ultra-dark, post-punk revivalists Deathday Party in 2008, and completed their lineup with the addition of drummer Joevanie Lopez. |
 | | Pete Cafarella (keyboard, vocals) and Nate Smith (drums), both former members of El Guapo, formed Shy Child just after the two moved to New York City. |
 | | Japanese techno-pop revival group Motocompo formed in 1996 as a trio of programmer Usui Nobuya(alias Dr. |
 | | Tuneful indie pop band the Films was formed in 2003 by four high school friends from Charleston, SC -- lead vocalist and guitarist Michael Trent, guitarist and keyboard player Kenneth Harris, bassist Jake Sinclair, and drummer Adam C. |
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 | | Sean Dickson first made himself a name in the indie-pop group, The Soup Dragons. The Manchester four-piece achieved success with their catchy 1992 hit "Divine Thing," but by the mid-90s, Dickson was looking for something else. |
 | | The London dance-rock group New Young Pony Club initially featured Tahita Bulmer (vocals), Andy Spence (guitar), Igor Volk (bass), Lou Hayter (keyboards), and Sarah Jones (drums). |
 | | The darkly stylish electronic/post-punk threesome Thieves Like Us are named for the 1984 New Order song (as opposed to the 1974 Robert Altman film), and they take more than just their moniker from Manchester's darkly stylish electronic/post-punk pioneers. |
 | | The Brooklyn, NY-based feminist art/music collective MEN began in 2007 as a DJ/remix project of J.D. |
 | | Originally conceived as the live backing band for her Julie Ruin solo project, Bikini Kill founder and quintessential riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna formed Le Tigre, another bold, feminist-oriented trio, with filmmaker Sadie Benning and zine creator Johanna Fateman in 1998. |
 | | The curiously named Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger! hail from central Italy, where vocalist/guitarist Diego Maciotti, bassist Giovanna Vedovati, and her drumming brother Nicola began sculpting their angular blend of new wave and post-punk influences in 2006. |
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 | | Assemblage 23 is the brainchild of Seattle-based Tom Shear, who spent a decade on various electronic projects before finding success as a respected EBM act. |
 | | Called a "part-time" project by Couch keyboardist Stephanie Böhm and Notwist and Tied + Tickled Trio bassist Micha Acher, Ms. |
 | | Tokyo's Guitar Wolf plays loud, fast, dirty punk rock. The trio -- which consists of guitarist Seiji, bassist Billy, and drummer Toru -- formed in the late '80s. |
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 | | A perfect inclusion in the skewed electro lineup of Oakland's Tigerbeat6 label, Numbers thrash the dancefloor by tangling the limbs of new wave, no wave, punk, disco, garage, and synth-pop. |
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 | | Favoring a naughty schoolboy look that makes him seem even younger than his already tender years (22 when his first major-label album was released), Scottish artist, producer, and remixer Calvin Harris has a similarly youthful and forward-looking approach to his music. |
 | | Anticon label members Themselves (Adam "Doseone" Drucker, Jerry "Jel" Logan, Dax Pierson) and Germany's the Notwist (Markus Acher, Micha Acher, Martin Gretschmann, Martin Messerschmid) have never been strangers to genre-exploring collaboration (Doseone's involvement in Subtle and cLOUDDEAD, the Acher brothers in Village of Savoonga, and Gretschmann's work as Console), and the idea of creating a record together had been brewing for some time in the minds of Themselves, who had been listening to the Notwist's Neon Golden during their European tour. |
 | | Though the members of post-punk revivalists the Rushes come from cities throughout the U.K., the group is based in London. |
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 | | The self-described "disco-rock trio" We Have Band offer up a mix of danceable pop and electro that, in the group's first year, had already been featured on several compilation albums and sampled by such prominent electronic acts as Friendly Fires. |
 | | Taking their name from the J.G. Ballard novel that became a 1987 Steven Spielberg film, Australia's larger-than-life electro-glam-pop duo Empire of the Sun feature the Sleepy Jackson's Luke Steele and Pnau's Nick Littlemore. |
