Pixies bassist Kim Deal began the Breeders as a side project, including her sister Kelly and the Perfect Disaster's Josephine Wiggs. The band's 1990 debut album POD seemed like a one-off at the time, but after the Pixies' breakup, the Deals revived t…

Led by Black Francis (AKA Charles Thompson), this Boston band reveled in the raw, loud energy of punk, but harnessed it in service of catchy melodies laced with bizarre lyrics. Their 1989 album, DOOLITTLE, is widely considered to be one of the best a…

In 2002, Interpol helped lead the charge of New York bands influenced by the post-punk and new wave sounds of the early 1980s. With Cure-like moody guitar and synth riffs and dour, Ian Curtis-style vocals, they conjured up a dark but infectious sound…

In the mid-'90s, Olympia, WA's Sleater-Kinney emerged out of the somewhat ghetto-ized Riot Grrl movement to become rather more mainstream figures in the alt-rock world. Throughout their career, their roots have remained firmly set in punk charged wit…

Under the moniker Black Francis, Frank Black was the principal songwriter, lyricist, and lead vocalist of the Pixies, one of the most important alternative rock bands of the 1980s and early '90s. Black's solo career has been marked by a slight shift …

Led by former school teacher Robert Pollard, Dayton, OH's Guided By Voices pursued an aesthetic marked by structural brevity, lo-fi sound, bizarre lyrics, and a preference for early to mid-period Who and other primal pop-rock. Pollard continually shi…

One of the most celebrated new bands of 2004, the Arcade Fire came out of Montreal's vibrant music scene with a melancholic, cinematic sound equally redolent of '80s heroes like the Cure and Echo & the Bunnymen and latter-day orchestral-rockers Mercu…

Drawing equally from punk rock and new-music pioneers such as John Cage and Glenn Branca (whom guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo both played with), Sonic Youth employed a palette of white noise that deconstructed punk-rock orthodoxy into radi…

The spacey, jangly dual-vocal/dual-guitar attack of Boston-via-Providence's Throwing Muses helped define the American college rock sound of the 1980s. Step-sisters Tanya Donnelly and Kristin Hersh would continue to craft their smart, quirky, guitar-d…

The Soviettes formed in the midst of Minneapolis winter in 2000 Without want for last names Annie guitarvocals Sturgeon guitarvocals Suzy bass and Danny drums tore into recording and by 2003 had issued their self-titled debut via Adeline It was fuzzy…

Formed during summer 2000, this retro-sounding Texas, USA-based psych rock outfit features brothers Brandon (vocals/bass) and Benjamin Curtis (drums), who were joined by Josh Garza (multi-instruments). Prior to the formation of Secret Machines, all o…

Though Tennessee's Kings of Leon are a rock band from the south, that doesn't mean they're a Southern Rock band. The Followill brothers Caleb, Jared, and Nathan (along with their cousin Matthew) play a straight-ahead, hard-driving brand of rock & rol…

As one of the principal members of the band Pavement, Stephen Malkmus helped define the sound of 1990s American indie-rock. While his solo work retains Pavement's abstract literary sensibility, Malkmus indulges a broader musical palate when on his ow…

The Twilight Singers was the side-project Greg Dulli (b. 11 May 1965, Ohio, USA) turned to when his former band, the highly rated Afghan Whigs, ground to a halt in early 2001. During the course of their career, the Afghan Whigs had moved away from th…

This Southampton, Hampshire, England-based indie rock band can trace its roots back to a 1996 meeting in a local club between Greg Gilbert (vocals), Colin Fox (bass) and Rowly (drums). The trio discovered shared musical interests and launched themsel…

After leaving the post-punk mayhem of the Birthday Party behind, Australian rocker Nick Cave turned toward a somewhat quieter--but equally dark--sound. Recruiting Birthday Party member Mick Harvey, Einsturzende Neubauten frontman Blixa Bargeld, and o…

A crucial inspiration to several generations of bands, the Fall virtually defined the late-1970s UK post-punk sound. Fall vocalist Mark E. Smith's sung/spoken rants may owe more to beat poetry than rock & roll, but his sociopolitical iconoclasm and t…

b. 7 August 1966, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Hersh initially enjoyed acclaim as the lead singer of Throwing Muses, one of alternative US rock music's most influential and enduring bands. She elected to pursue a simultaneous solo career after the parent b…

French 1990s neo-disco duo Daft Punk found stardom as a discovery of the Chemical Brothers. With an egalitarian approach to making people move, Daft Punk utilized everything from strict club beats to Beach Boys and Roxy Music samples when making its …