The Strokes

The Strokes formed in New York City in 1998, releasing Is This It in 2001 to immediate critical canonization and commercial success that helped ignite the garage rock revival. Julian Casablancas' vocals, deliberately compressed and filtered to sound like a distant AM radio transmission, sat atop the interlocking guitar interplay of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. — a dual attack indebted equally to Television's precision and the Velvet Underground's cool detachment. Valensi's Gibson Les Paul Junior and Hammond's Fender Mustang through Marshall JCM800 amplifiers created a sound that was lo-fi in character but meticulous in execution, every seemingly casual riff revealing careful construction upon repeated listening. Nikolai Fraiture's bass and Fabrizio Moretti's drums locked into tight, minimalist grooves that gave the songs a rhythmic urgency beneath their laconic surface. Room on Fire refined the formula while subsequent albums First Impressions of Earth, Angles, Comedown Machine, and The New Abnormal expanded their palette into synth-pop, new wave, and arena rock territory. The Strokes' influence on 2000s guitar music is difficult to overstate — they made rock bands viable again in a pop landscape dominated by boy bands and nu-metal, and their aesthetic of studied nonchalance became a template for a generation of indie acts.