With a name that means new wave in English and bossa nova in Portuguese Nouvelle Vagues moniker neatly sums up the groups concept remaking classic new wave singles with a Brazilian pop twist Nouvelle Vague is the brainchild of French producers Marc C…

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 …

An interesting mix of Pop, R&B, Reggae, Smooth Jazz and West African polyrhythmic undertones into a "Sound Salad" of refreshing traditional/contemporary Gospel Styles. He mainly incorporates keyboards, guitar, bass, saxophone, drums and vocals. Nan…

Precocious R&B vocalist/pianist Alicia Keys was hand-picked by Clive Davis as one of the flagship artists for his post-Arista label, J Records. No doubt he was as impressed by her multitude of skills (Keys took a large role in the writing, arranging,…

In the midst of the early 1990s grunge boom, Counting Crows emerged as an alternative to the heavy, alienated sounds of the Kurt Cobain crowd. The California band harked back to the classic '60s folk-rock sounds of the Band, Bob Dylan, and Van Morris…

Scorpions are one of Germany's most popular rock exports. As part of the first wave of 1970s heavy metal, the band played a tight melodic version of the increasingly harder and heavier rock that was becoming popular at the time. Scorpions would go on…

Depeche Mode (French for "hurried fashion") was one of the first and best of the British synth-pop bands, combining breathless, melodic pop with perky electronics. With main songwriter Vince Clarke's departure for Yaz, Martin Gore took the reigns, an…

Though Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler Zavala did time in popular Emo band At The Drive-In, their subsequent project, the Mars Volta, is a horse of an entirely different color. Instead of punk, the pair takes their influences largely from 1970…

Most alternative rock of the 1990s was based around purging one's demons over a wall of distorted power chords, but bands like Barenaked Ladies showed that tunefulness and carefree pop ditties weren't completely extinct. Hailing from Canada, this pur…

Maiku Takahashi a Japanese producer records warm downbeat electronica as Caia Championed by Groove Armadas Andy Cato Takahashi met Cato in 1998 while the latter was on tour in Japan After becoming fast friends due to a shared fetish for Adidas and No…

They never broke big in the States, but Glasgow, Scotland's Texas were one of the most popular band's in the U.K. and Europe during the 1990s. Though firmly rooted in the Britpop tradition, Texas maintained a distinct sound that nodded to everything …

Kanye West first gained fame as an acclaimed hip-hop producer, working with Jay-Z, Foxy Brown, Mase, and others. West's solo debut was delayed due to a serious car accident, but when THE COLLEGE DROPOUT finally appeared in 2004, it took the hip-hop w…

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…

Melodic rock that is a blend of fringe and mainstream.

A green-eyed beauty with a sultry voice, Rihanna was discovered as a teenager on her island home of Barbados, and quickly signed with the venerable Def Jam records. Powered by a Soft Cell sample, her infectious dancehall/Caribbean single "Pon de Repl…

One of the seminal progressive rock bands, Genesis began in the late-'60s as post-Beatles visionaries with a taste for orchestrated pop melodrama, but quickly mutated into purveyors of ambitious, classical-tinged art rock. After flamboyantly theatric…

Californian sextet Linkin Park simultaneously took inspiration from and expanded upon the hybrid of heavy rock, hip-hop, and electronics that made such bands as Korn and Limp Bizkit so successful at the tail end of the 1990s. The band's 2000 debut HY…

Born in Montreal to parents of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle Martha Wainwright was engulfed in a sea of music from childbirth Often singing or performing on-stage and in the studio at an early age Wainwright became agitated at the thought…

An eight-piece band from Los Angeles, California, USA, Oingo Boingo's prolific, if unspectacular, career was centred on the compositional skills of leader Danny Elfman. Their early recordings for A&M Records were mainly synthesizer-led songs accompan…

U2's Bono was one of the few real rock heroes of the 1980s, leading the Irish band to international recognition with a charged, political approach to music. The band's early efforts brought a stadium-size presence to alt-rock, with Bono's expressive …

A fusion of Soul, R&B and modern Pop/Rock.

Formed in Leicester, England, in the late 1990s, dance-rock quartet Kasabian hit big with their self-titled debut in 2004. Bearing the marked influence of "baggy" superstars the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays, Kasabian set themselves apart from ma…

Some folks say that Frederic "Toots" Hibbert may have been the first to coin the word reggae (one of his early-'60s hits was called "Do The Reggay"). Whether he deserves that credit is open to debate, but there's no question that he's one of the mos…

A Great blend of Alternative Rock and Pop from the Northwest.

The Bristol collective known as Massive Attack arose out of the acid house scene of late-1980s England to become one of the 1990s' greatest innovators. The group has literally changed the face of music every time out. They invented "trip-hop" on thei…

She'd been wowing audiences with her uncannily adult voice for years, but in 1996, thirteen-year-old LeAnn Rimes turned the country world upside down with her Patsy Cline-soundalike "Blue." The young star, managed by her dad, was showered with accol…

Of the multitude of pop punk bands that emerged during the 90s, the majority seemed to come from the west coast of the USA, but there was a number of east coast counterparts during this era, such as the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Bouncing Souls.…