Los Angeles duo No Age updated the spirit of early independent punk and hardcore by covering their spiky, uptempo songs with washes of textural ambient noise. In their earliest days, the pair sounded like My Bloody Valentine remixing Hüsker Dü’s initial SST output, borrowing from both the positive-minded D.I.Y. all-ages scene they were heavily involved with in L.A., as well as healthy amounts of art world stylization. The group would walk the line between these two poles throughout their career, from flirtations with pop-friendly melodies on their 2008 full-length Nouns to the blurred art rock of 2013’s An Object. – Fred Thomas