Brooklyn-based indie rock trio We Are Scientists formed in 2000 around the talents of guitaristlead vocalist Keith Murray bass player Chris Cain and drummer Michael Tapper After building a small but devoted following through their epic live shows and…

A discovery of pop-punk superstars Fall Out Boy, the Las Vegas emo band Panic! At the Disco (named for a Smiths song), stormed the charts in 2005 while its members were barely old enough to vote. Offering a highly danceable take on the emo formula of…

Proof that one fantastic single is all it takes to make a bands name the Rakes burst onto the London music scene in 2004 with 22 Grand Job a pithy punk satire of crappy entry-level office jobs Various stories swirled about how the band -- which featu…

Death from Above 1979 made an immediate splash upon debuting in 2004 with Youre a Woman Im a Machine Bassistsynth player Jesse F Keeler and drummervocalist Sebastien Grainger hail from Toronto where they met and formed Death from Above in 2001 The 19…

Newcastles angular pop quintet Maxmo Park consists of singer Paul Smith guitarist Duncan Lloyd bassist Archie Tiku keyboardist Lukas Wooller and drummer Tom English Like their friends and neighbors the Futureheads Maxmo Park craft smart sharply catch…

Playing smartly crafted indie-pop that is instantly accessible yet defies easy categorization, Brooklyn, NY's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah took the music world by storm in 2005 on the strength of a single self-released album. Seemingly overnight, the ban…

Manchester Englands Nine Black Alps features Sam Forrest vocalsguitar James Galley drumsvocals Martin Cohen bass and David Jones guitar The indie rock foursome came together in 2003 taking their name from a line in the Sylvia Plath poem The Couriers …

Motion City Soundtrack featured Joshua Cain guitar Tony Thaxton drums Justin Pierre vocalsguitar Jesse Johnson moog and Matthew Taylor bass The indie rock quintet originally formed in 1999 when Pierre and Cain were still in high school The two were b…

Los Angeles post-punk revivalists the Moving Units feature Blake Miller Johan Bogeli and Chris Hathwell formerly of the hardcore band Festival of Dead Deer The group formed in late 2001 shortly after Festival of Dead Deer broke up and began writing a…

The U.K. music scene is notorious for launching previously unknown bands to the heights of stardom on word-of-mouth gossip and music-press hype alone. Arctic Monkeys took that phenomenon to an entirely new level when they sold 110,000 copies of their…

Canadian indie pop combo Wolf Parade formed in 2003 in Montreal where their first show was opening for Arcade Fire From there Dan Boeckner Spencer Krug Hadji Bakara and Arlen Thompson recorded and self-released a four-song EP and followed that with a…