Nirvana finally made it acceptable for U.S. top-40 fans to embrace punk rock, and bands like Green Day and the Offspring followed up the charts in their wake. While California's Offspring had been slugging it out since the late-'80s, it wasn't until …

Rilo Kiley is a pop four-piece formed in Los Angeles in the late 1990s by Blake Sennett and former child actress Jenny Lewis. The band plays an effortless brand of sing-song pop/rock shot through with hints of Americana and songbook stylings. After s…

The members of Live began playing together as teenagers in their native York, PA, under various band names. After singer Ed Kowalczyk arrived, they were on the fast track to stardom. The moody alternative-rock sound of their 1991 debut album made som…

Sweden's first pop export of the 90s, Marie Fredriksson (b. Gun-Marie Fredriksson, 30 May 1958, Östra Ljungby, Sweden) and Per Håkan Gessle (b. 12 January 1959, Halmstad, Sweden) enjoyed international success thanks to a highly commercial combination…

This quintet from Calabasas, CA, who started playing together in 1991, hit the road hard in support of Korn, Limp Bizkit, 311, and many others, before hitting it big. The Incubus sound is a mixture of melodic alternative rock, heavy, synth-colored ro…

Like Velvet Revolver (but with a more political bent), Audioslave appeared in the mid-2000s as a post-grunge supergroup pounding out stripped-down heavy rock. The band is spearheaded by Chris Cornell, whose wailing vocals formerly graced archetypal '…

John Mayer emerged in 2001 as the fresh young face for a new generation of earnest singer-songwriters. While Mayer's work is as confessional, intimate, and acoustic-guitar-based as that of old-schoolers like James Taylor and Jackson Browne, his appro…

With her hook-filled pop tunes, highly developed melodic sensibility, and pin-up girl looks, Sheryl Crow appealed to a wide audience in the 1990s. Garnering platinum albums, hit singles, and even the tacit approval of rock's old guard, Crow proved to…

This US rock band was formed in the mid-80s at high school in Santa Barbara, California, by friends Dean Dinning (b. 9 June 1967; bass, keyboards), Randy Guss (b. 7 March 1967; drums), Todd Nichols (guitar, vocals) and Glen Phillips (b. 29 December 1…

Jamaican singer and actress Grace Jones started out as a model, but her outrageous attitude and unforgettable look transferred well to the pop music arena. Beginning in the late 1970s, Jones made a series of highly regarded albums mixing torch songs,…

They're known as the founding fathers of Southern rock, but the Allman Brothers were actually much more progressive than the musical school they inspired. They reclaimed the US-influenced blues-rock of Cream et al. and brought it back to America, add…

Inkwell consists of Travis Adams former frontman of emo band My Hotel Year and Dave Pierce Adams had become reluctant about playing in bands after quitting My Hotel Year but Pierce talked him into playing again and the two quickly wrote songs and pla…

The mercurial David Bowie is the original pop chameleon. He's been everything from inoffensive pop singer to glam icon to white soul man to art-rocker and more in the course of his long, prolific career. Although Bowie's first hit was 1969's "Space O…

Tom Petty is part of rock's gentry, and his recordings with the Heartbreakers are placed in the pantheon of "heartland rock" along with Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger et al. However, he was originally regarded as a part of the "new wave" of the late 19…

Along with Badfinger and the Raspberries, Big Star helped forge the power pop template in the early-1970s. But unlike these other bands, there was always something darker lurking under the obvious pop hooks in leader Alex Chilton's songwriting and ly…

Formed from the ashes of British blues-rockers the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin shot to the stratosphere in the early 1970s. With Dionysian frenzy and a blast of blues-drenched riffs, they became one of the biggest bands of the era. Their intense musical …

Diminutive, bald-headed Richard Melville Hall, better known as Moby, achieved greater mainstream success than any other electronica artist by virtue of his willingness to adapt electronic dance music to a well formed pop sensibility. From the '90s on…

Along with Uncle Tupelo, the Jayhawks were part of the 1980s wave of alt-country (as opposed to 1970s-style country-rock) bands, filtering the influence of artists like Gram Parsons through an alternative rock sensibility. The band's first three albu…

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…

Born in the middle of a seven-daughter family with creative and free-spirited parents Butterfly Bouchers first name was suggested by some divine intervention her mother was experiencing A picture on an elementary school wall a print on a dance teache…

In the mid-1980s, the idea of white middle-class Jewish rappers may have provoked laughter or outright disdain, but the Beastie Boys' albums and singles have shown that they are anything but a joke. After hip-hop and rock fused into the music of choi…

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…

Generally, the punk-inspired generation of bands that came to prominence in the late '90s fell into two camps; cred-soaked aesthetes in thrall to the art-punk approach of emo godfathers Fugazi and radio-friendly pop-punks following in the footsteps o…

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…

Led by vocalist Natalie Merchant, 10,000 Maniacs combined danceable rhythms, jangly guitars, catchy melodies, and liberal politics to create a super-accessible version of 1980s college rock. The band broke into the mainstream with a cover of Cat Stev…

While the 1980s Los Angeles rock scene will forever be associated with pretty-boy glam metal, it also spawned Guns N' Roses, one of the most in-your-face, streetwise, and controversial bands of the era. Axl Rose & company's roots lay in The Stones, A…

When she first emerged in the '80s, Canadian singer k.d. Lang was heavily inspired by the swooping, crystalline vocal style of country queen Patsy Cline. She quickly showed herself to be a writer of considerable depth, simultaneously forward-looking …

Hard rock acts with a Christian message became quite common in the new millennium, as chart-toppers such as Creed and P.O.D. helped pave the way for newer bands such as Chevelle. Comprising three brothers, Sam Loeffler (drums), Pete Loeffler (vocals/…

Coming out of the grass-roots Gilman St. punk scene of the early-1990s Bay Area, Green Day exploded into the mainstream with their third album, 1994's DOOKIE. The trio's punk energy and pop hooks, influenced by first-generation punks like the Buzzcoc…

This alternative metal outfit was formed in Riverside, California, USA in 1996 by Dryden Mitchell (b. 15 June 1976; vocals), Terry Corso (guitar), Tye Zamora (bass) and Mike Cosgrove (drums). Their strange moniker arises from Corso's concept of human…