 | | The New York-based rap trio Northern State are no funky divas. Julie "Hesta Prynn" Potash, Correne "Guinea Love" Spero, and Robyn "DJ Sprout" Goodmark formed the hip-hop-centric rap outfit in 2000. |
 | | 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. |
 | | São Paulo, Brazil's provocative, freewheeling dance-rock sextet CSS take their name from an abbreviation of "cansei de ser sexy," which is Portuguese for "tired of being sexy" (though, considering that the lead singer goes by the name Lovefoxxx, it's arguable how much that phrase actually applies to the band). |
 | | 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. |
 | | 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. |
 | | If you read a lot about new music on the Web, odds are pretty good that, at some point between the September 2004 release of "Galang" and the March 2005 release of Arular, you were struck with the urge to turn your computer off or maybe even heave it out of a nearby window. |
 | | As a solo project with a revolving door of members, the heart and face of Santigold is vivacious frontwoman Santi White. |
 | | Fannypack were comprised of singers Jessibel Suthiwong, Belinda Lovell, and Cat Hartwell, with beat-making support from Matt Goias and Fancy. |
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 | | Born Elvin Estrela, the boy who would become producer Nobody grew up in Los Angeles, exchanging hip-hop mixtapes with his friends in high school, hanging out at the Good Life Café, and listening to a lot of different music, from rap to '60s psychedelia to electronica, all of which influenced him later on. |
 | | Tokimonsta takes her name from "Toki," the Korean word for rabbit, and the hyperbolic hip-hop term “monsta,” similarly, Tokimonsta looks as timid and innocent as a schoolgirl, and makes beats that are beastly enough in scope to compete with big hitters like Flying Lotus and Daedelus. |
 | | Avant-garde hip-hop producer and Los Angeles native Henry Laufer goes by the alias Shlohmo. He started making music at the age of 14, and by 17 he was making cinematic beats in the same spirit as Flying Lotus, J-Roc, and Ras G. |
 | | With his inspirations ranging from underground hip-hop head Madlib to the ultra-famous group the Beach Boys, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and vocalist Jonti creates electronica-based music that could be described as a more adorable version of the Flying Lotus sound. |
 | | Born Adrian Michna, DJ/producer Michna combines instrumental hip-hop, electro, and IDM. Starting out his musical career as a trombonist on the N. |
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 | | Martin Dosh was born to an ex-Catholic priest father and an almost-nun mother outside Los Angeles; he and his family moved back to his parents' native Minneapolis when he was just a toddler. |
 | | Ann Arbor, Michigan’s Sam Baker, aka Samiyam, is an underground producer who makes instrumental hip-hop beats. |
 | | Within only a handful of releases, David Cooper's Manchester-based Melodic imprint found favor with those looking for something more than breaks and bleeps out of their electronica music. |
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 | | A mash-up crew who came to fame thanks to their genre-jumping mixes, the Hood Internet were formed in Chicago after members Aaron Brink (ABX) and Steve Reidell (STV SLV) both moved to the city with fresh college diplomas. |
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 | | Born in Los Angeles to a family for whom music was all-important, Matthew Alsberg started learning guitar and piano as a young child, and by the time he enrolled in high school (where he counted Murs, Double K from People Under the Stairs, and Eligh among his peers) he was also playing bass and trombone, studying both jazz and classical music, as well as listening to plenty of punk and hip-hop; he even began to rap himself, though he quickly stepped out of that and moved to production work instead. |
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 | | Born Alfred Weisberg-Roberts in Santa Monica, California, producer/instrumentalist Daedelus wanted to be an inventor from an early age, a sentiment that led to him choosing an artistic moniker (in Greek mythology, Daedelus was known as an inventor, although Weisberg-Roberts also cites the character Stephan Dedalus in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -- as well as the ship in the Japanese cartoon Robotech -- as equally valid reasons for his selection) when he began releasing his own work. |
 | | Rjd2's music is a collage of cut-and-paste hip-hop that combines disparate elements to make for soulful, moody portraits of the world. |
 | | Girl Talk is the pseudonym of DJ and remixer Greg Gillis. A Pittsburgh native who works as a biomedical research engineer during the day, Gillis channels his other creative energies into Girl Talk, whose sample-based dance tracks have made him the John Oswald or Christian Marclay of the mash-up generation: each of his songs are built on recognizable samples of recent hit singles, recontextualized into an entirely new piece. |
 | | Formed in 2005 by cousins Tom Van Buskirk and George Langford, Brooklyn, New York-based indie electronic duo Javelin crafts funky, abstract, R&B-flavored pop with an emphasis on painstakingly re-created samples and loops. |
 | | Experimental electronic music producer Flying Lotus, born Steven Ellison, is a grandson of songwriter Marilyn McLeod (the co-writer of Diana Ross' "Love Hangover"), as well as a great-nephew of pianist Alice Coltrane, and therefore a cousin of saxophonist Ravi Coltrane. |
 | | Formed in 2006, L.A's Glitch Mob have wowed them on dancefloors around the world with a singular brand of bleepy electronica and heavy hip-hop-influenced basslines. |
 | | The mysterious cLOUDDEAD combines a trio of underground hip-hop artists arranged in the Anticon collective -- Doseone, why?, and Odd Nosdam. |
 | | Themselves, part of the Anticon crew, play underground hip-hop with the confounding lyrical poetry of Doseone's other group, cLOUDDEAD, but without the same approach to ambient sound textures. |
 | | Experimental electronic artist John Mingsley started recording under the name Ming Ming on his home computer as a teenager, reworking the cello compositions he played in his junior-high orchestra into electronic songs. |
 | | Win Win is collaboration between DJ Chris Devlin, Ghostdad, and producer XXXChange, better known as one half of Spank Rock. |
 | | An electronic pop/rock artist who was a bit of a musical prodigy as a child, Christopher D. Ashley would soon disavow himself of the stale classical ethic and embrace rock and experimentalism -- along with an interest in electronic sounds -- and release a debut album that was more reminiscent of New Order. |
 | | 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. |
 | | Paris-based, electro-indie pop duo Jamaica blends the infectious, guitar-driven, melodic sensibilities of Phoenix and Tahiti 80 with the sunny, discotheque leanings of Justice and Hot Chip. |
 | | As well as playing in the pop duo the Slapped Eyeballers and making lo-fi music as Misel Quitno, Swiss producer Dimitri Grimm makes instrumental hip-hop beats under the name Dimlite. |
 | | Named after the musical term for the measurement of time by an instrument, Metronomy is the dance-meets-rock project of London-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Joseph Mount. |
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 | | Self-described "indietronic" merchants Hybrasil formed in Wicklow, just outside of Dublin, Ireland, in 2003. |
 | | Although formed in sunny California during the early 2000s, Shiny Toy Guns' music flaunts a sleek, '80s-influenced combination of synth-pop and electro-clash. |
 | | To put it bluntly, Har Mar Superstar (aka Sean Tillmann) is a balding, out-of-shape white man with a pencil-thin moustache who croons sex-laden R&B tunes while breakdancing. |
 | | London-based musician Kwesi Sey, aka Kwes. (note the intentional period), got his start producing early demos for the xx and collaborating with Micachu (of Micachu & the Shapes) on a project named Kwesachu. |
 | | Brian Burton, the man better known as artist/producer Danger Mouse, was born to a schoolteacher father and a social worker mother in White Plains, NY, but spent much of his childhood upstate in Spring Valley. |
 | | London's eclectic, guitar-free trio Golden Silvers formed in 2007 and featured vocalist/keyboardist Gwylim Gold, bassist Ben Moorhouse, and drummer Alexis Nunez. |
 | | 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. |
 | | A one-woman band, if you will, Quitzow is multi-instrumentalist Erica Quitzow, and she specializes in an electro-pop sound that includes instrumentation ranging from Moog to cello. |
 | | Merging an unusual combination of genres, Mr. Hudson (aka Ben Hudson on vocals and guitar) applied his love for Chet Baker and Cole Porter to his skills in hip-hop production. |
