 | | Animal Collective were formed in Baltimore County, Maryland, by longtime friends and musical collaborators Avey Tare (David Portner), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Deakin (Josh Dibb), and Geologist (Brian Weitz). |
 | | In 2003, Frenchmen Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau enjoyed international acclaim for the album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, a luscious blend of shoegaze aesthetics, ambient pop, and progressive textures. |
 | | LCD Soundsystem debuted with "Losing My Edge," a single that became one of the most talked-about indie releases of 2002. |
 | | Grizzly Bear began as a home recording project for Boston-bred experimentalist Edward Droste, the son of an elementary school teacher, who laid the groundwork for the band's otherworldly debut album on a small hand-held tape recorder while holed up for 15 months in his Greenpoint, Brooklyn, apartment. |
 | | Australian indie electronic group Cut Copy take many of their cues from contemporaries like Air, Daft Punk, and LCD Soundsystem, but with a distinctly pop sensibility that draws on classic AM radio pop singles from the 1970s and '80s, with elements of vintage disco and synth pop that appeal to song-based listeners as well as the club kidz. |
 | | The blurry electronic pop project of an initially anonymous composer from Brooklyn and video artist from Austin, Texas, Neon Indian was conceived as a multimedia experience combining their music and video into short films, teasers, and straight-up pop songs. |
 | | Formerly known as Cherry, New York's rock-meets-electronica duo Ratatat feature multi-instrumentalist/programmer Evan Mast and guitarist Mike Stroud. |
 | | Deerhunter are an experimental noise rock band from Atlanta, fronted by the compellingly odd singer Bradford Cox. |
 | | The music of Brooklyn's Yeasayer is an eclectic, genre-bending journey into pop, rock, Middle Eastern and African musics, folk, and dub. |
 | | Ernest Greene had been involved in a number of musical endeavors by the time he started putting together a series of recordings as Washed Out. |
 | | Despite its summery name, Beach House creates music that is dark, dreamy, and alluringly hypnotic. Baltimore residents Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand (the niece of French composer Michel Legrand) formed the duo in 2005, with Legrand's hushed, Nico-like vocals and Scally's delicate instrumentation paving the way for their first batch of songs. |
 | | Fusing low-res electronic noise and pop hooks so effortlessly that it can seem accidental, Crystal Castles began as producer/multi-instrumentalist Ethan Kath's solo project in late 2003. |
 | | A combination of indie rock muscle and theatrical, unapologetic bombast turned Arcade Fire into indie royalty in the early 2000s. |
 | | Hailing from London, Hot Chip entered the picture with the release of their 2000 debut, Mexico. The EP was issued by Victory Garden Records, a label owned and operated by members of London's resident lo-fi psychedelic rock institution Southall Riot. |
 | | 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. |
 | | Broken Social Scene materialized in 1999 when K.C. Accidental's Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, formerly of By Divine Right, bonded their friendship into a band. |
 | | The Brooklyn-based group TV on the Radio mix post-punk, electronic, and other atmospheric elements in such a creative way that it only makes sense that their core duo, vocalist Tunde Adebimpe and multi-instrumentalist/producer David Andrew Sitek, are both visual artists as well as musicians. |
 | | Spawned from the urge to do something apart from his post-rock band Fridge, Kieran Hebden's Four Tet project balances organic and programmed sounds. |
 | | The Swedish indie pop artist Lykke Li Zachrisson (better known as Lykke Li) grabbed the attention of international bloggers in the early 2000s with a handful of catchy, retro-chic singles made available on her MySpace profile. |
 | | A brother-and-sister duo hailing from Stockholm, Sweden, the Knife take inspiration from vintage synth pop and forward-thinking electronic music, crafting a sound that is equally unsettling, playful, and beautiful. |
 | | One of 2006's most unexpected indie success stories, Beirut combines a wide variety of styles, from pre-rock/pop music and Eastern European Gypsy styles to the alternately plaintive and whimsical indie folk of the Decemberists to the lo-fi, homemade psychedelic experimentation of Neutral Milk Hotel. |
 | | 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. |
 | | Radiohead were one of the few alternative bands of the early '90s to draw heavily from the grandiose arena rock that characterized U2's early albums. |
 | | Finding an unlikely middle point between Suicide's hostile, proto-electro punk art noise and the sardonic, pop-friendly sound of the Flaming Lips, MGMT started as electroclash musical terrorists but quickly grew into an eclectic, brainy pop group with psychedelic overtones. |
 | | Playing dance-oriented music with the feel of indie pop but the insistent pulse of disco, Friendly Fires hail from St. |
 | | More apt to cite stately rock paragons Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson as their inspirations than Derrick May or Aphex Twin, the French duo Air gained inclusion into the late-'90s electronica surge due chiefly to the labels their recordings appeared on, not the actual music they produced. |
 | | Phantogram is an electronic rock duo from upstate New York whose music incorporates psychedelic pop vocals, J Dilla-style hip-hop beats, and shoegazing sensibility. |
 | | Songwriter/producer Derek Miller and vocalist Alexis Krauss comprise Sleigh Bells, an experimental pop duo that began earning its first fans after a breakout performance at the 2009 CMJ Festival. |
 | | Chaz Bundick started making bedroom recordings under the name Toro y Moi in his native Columbia, South Carolina in 2001. |
 | | Seattle's Fleet Foxes are led by vocalist/guitarist Robin Pecknold, who fashioned his band's earthy, harmony-rich sound in honor of such perennial '60s artists as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, the Zombies, and the Beach Boys. |
 | | Noah Lennox adopted the name Panda Bear in the late '90s, when he drew a picture of a panda on one of his first bedroom studio recordings. |
 | | Norwegian duo Röyksopp compensated for the cold climes of their native Tromsø by making some of the warmest, most inviting downbeat electronica of the new millennium, exemplified by early tracks like "Eple" and "Poor Leno. |
 | | Although formed during the post-punk revival of the late '90s, the National took inspiration from a wider set of influences, including country-rock, Americana, indie rock, and Brit-pop. |
 | | Named in part after a sister of one of the bandmembers, Reykjavik, Iceland's Sigur Rós (Victory Rose) was formed by guitarist and vocalist Jon Thor Birgisson (who later went by the name Jónsi), bassist Georg Holm, and drummer Agust. |
 | | Boards of Canada are the duo of Michael Sandison (born June 1, 1970) and Marcus Eoin (born July 21, 1971). |
 | | Justin Vernon began recording under the nom de band Bon Iver following the breakup of DeYarmond Edison, an indie folk group similar in tone and manner to Iron & Wine, Little Wings, and -- to a certain extent -- Bonnie "Prince" Billy. |
 | | YACHT is one of the many creative alter egos of Jona Bechtolt, a musician and multimedia artist who embraces an eclectic but playful blend of electronics, acoustic percussion, and noises of all sorts. |
 | | As a solo project with a revolving door of members, the heart and face of Santigold is vivacious frontwoman Santi White. |
 | | Miike Snow is an indie electro-pop trio comprised of writer/producers Chris Karlsson, Pontus Winnberg, and Andrew Wyatt that debuted in 2009 on the label Downtown Records. |
 | | With their heady blend of precision punk and serpentine classic rock (the band has drawn comparisons to everyone from the Pixies and Sonic Youth to Elvis Costello and Tom Petty), enigmatic, Texas-based indie pop outfit Spoon went from underground press darlings to one of the genre’s premier commercially and critically acclaimed alternative rock acts. |
 | | Emerging in 2004 with a blend of woodsy midtempo rock and reverb-laden vocals, Band of Horses gained an audience in their native Northwest before Everything All the Time made them indie rock darlings. |
 | | 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. |
 | | The French group Phoenix draw elements from their eclectic '80s upbringing to arrive at a satisfying blend of rock and synthesizers. |
 | | The cosmic post-rock band Mogwai were formed in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1996 by guitarist/vocalist Stuart Braithwaite, guitarist Dominic Aitchison, and drummer Martin Bulloch, longtime friends with the goal of creating "serious guitar music. |
 | | Discovered in the wake of the Strokes' popularity and the subsequent garage rock revival, New York's art punk trio the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are comprised of singer Karen O, guitarist Nicolas Zinner, and drummer Brian Chase. |
 | | 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. |
 | | Iceland pop experimentalists Múm were formed by Gunnar Örn Tynes, Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason, and classically trained twin sisters Gyða and Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir. |
 | | The brainchild of singer/guitarist Kevin Barnes, Of Montreal was among the second wave of bands to emerge from the sprawling Elephant 6 collective. |
 | | An enticing blend of indie pop hooks and crisp electronic beats in the style first perfected by Saint Etienne's Foxbase Alpha, Little Dragon are a showcase for Swedish-Japanese singer Yukimi Nagano, a mainstay of the European downtempo and lounge scenes. |
 | | With a reputation for a scathingly intense live performance and a quickly sold-out CD-R demo, How Strange, Innocence, which was later reissued in 2005, Explosions in the Sky was touted early on in their career as the next phenomenon in moody and dynamic instrumental indie rock à la Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor! The quartet of Texas kids, made up of Mark Smith and Munaf Rayani on guitars, Michael James on bass, and Christopher Hrasky on drums, was signed for its first release on Temporary Residence Limited after half a listen to their demo, which was submitted by the American Analog Set with a brief note saying "This totally f*cking destroys. |
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