Elliott Smith started out as the leader of Portland-based alt-rock band Heatmiser, who made three mid-1990s albums achieving good reviews but disappointing sales. Eventually Smith reinvented himself as a solo singer-songwriter, and his first couple o…

Seemingly every year since 1963, a singer-songwriter is heralded as "the next Dylan." It's a tough title to live up to, but since his 2000 debut, singer/songerwriter Sufjan Stevens has certainly traveled the musical highways of Dylan's Old Weird Amer…

Beck Hansen, the quintessential California slacker, came up among the lo-fi ranks, pushing a blend of country blues, Dylan-inspired wordplay, punk, and hip-hop. His straight-out-of-the-gate 1994 smash, "Loser," made him a star seemingly overnight. Su…

Iron & Wine is the artistic alias of Florida singer/songwriter Sam Beam, who crafts delicate songs full of poetic lyrics and simple, haunting melodies. Beam delivers his tunes in a hushed, Nick Drake-like voice and frames them with spare, mostly acou…

Formed in the Pacific Northwest during the late 1990s, Death Cab for Cutie deals in guitar rock that is informed by a striking sensitivity. Led by singer/guitarist Benjamin Gibbard, the group straddles the line between indie and emo rock, earning the…

Nick Drake was the quintessential fragile genius. His late-1960s and early-'70s albums combine pastoral, very British romanticism with a jazzy folk lilt that owes a debt to Tim Buckley and Tim Hardin. His hypnotic whisper of a voice and his virtuosic…

In the first half of the 2000s, Canadian bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor, Arcade Fire, and the Stills began taking the indie-rock world by storm. While they didn't break through to the mainstream, Broken Social Scene nevertheless joined those r…

When pioneering alt-country band Uncle Tupelo split in the mid-1990s, they broke off into two camps. Jay Farrar started the rootsy, twangy (if lyrically elliptical) Son Volt. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Tweedy, who co-led the band with Farrar, e…

Formed in 1996, and hailing from Scotland, Belle & Sebastian are a musical collective with a penchant for ellipticism, declining to have their pictures on album covers or in the press, shying away from interviews, and never listing their individual n…

Bright Eyes is the brainchild of Omaha, NE singer-songwriter Conor Oberst, around whom the band (which has at times consisted solely of Oberst) revolves. Part of an Omaha indie scene centered around the Saddle Creek label, Oberst learned at the feet …

Few rock singers of the 90s were as original and instantly unforgettable as Thom Yorke as his band Radiohead became one of the biggest bands of the 21st century after making a career out of specializing in challenging and unpredictable rock Born Octo…

In the late 1990s, the Albuquerque indie-rock band Flake Music morphed into the Shins, led by vocalist-guitarist James Mercer. Upon the release of 2001's OH, INVERTED WORLD, the Shins garnered a landslide of critical acclaim with their amiable, 1960…

Chicago singersongwriterviolinist Andrew Bird updates the traditions of small group swing German Leider and New Orleans jazz mixing gypsy folk and rock elements into his distinctive style Birds projects include his group the Bowl of Fire which also i…

Singer/songwriter M. Ward, a protege of Giant Sand leader Howe Gelb, made a splash on the indie-rock scene in the early-to-mid-2000s, despite being closer in spirit to John Fahey (guitar-wise) and Bob Dylan (in songwriting style) than to any alt-rock…

Bob Dylan began as a Woody Guthrie acolyte, imitating the dust-bowl balladeer as faithfully as a baby boomer from Hibbing, Minnesota, could. It wasn't long before he found his own voice, spearheading the early-1960s folk revival as well as the singer…

Separately, synth player Jimmy Tamborello and singer Ben Gibbard were known for their work in electronica and emo, respectively, with Dntel and Death Cab For Cutie. Together, they became a powerful pop duo, combinining Tamborello's melodic knowhow an…

b. Moscow, Russia. Piano balladeer Spektor lived in Russia, Austria and Italy prior to moving with her family to the Bronx, New York City, at the age of nine. Her parents' musical training - her mother was employed as a music historian and her father…

Americana-via-the-Pleiades chanteuse Joanna Newsom is a key figure of the early-2000s "freak folk" scene based around Devendra Banhart and various other new-fangled flower children. A limited vocalist with a nevertheless fearless sense of melody, she…

After rising to prominence as the leader of Boston's Til Tuesday and scoring a huge hit with "Voices Carry," Aimee Mann left behind her old band for a solo career that typified the struggles of musicians to survive in an increasingly market-driven in…

In 2000, Coldplay emerged seemingly out of nowhere to become a worldwide smash with their debut album PARACHUTES and hit single "Yellow." They're generally lumped in with the Britpop crowd, but, like Travis, they favor a more thoughtful, melodic pop …