The Greatest Bands You've (Probably) Never Heard

评语：Few bands produced a jangly guitar sound as fluidly sweeping as this Dutch quartet, which made one note-perfect studio album, 1989's Conny Waves With a Shell, before swapping out two members and transforming into '90s indie stars Bettie Serveert. MIKE WOL

评语：These Irish malcontents beat their existential angst, distorted riffs, and U2/Bunnymen fascination into one classic album, 1994's savage, sensual Heartworm, before succumbing to the inevitable storm of failed expectations and personal recriminations. D.P.

评语：This Austin quartet -- led by brash moptop Carrie Clark -- was a huggable headrush, giving shoegaze a punk kick and recording two of the 1990s' most pleasurably squalling albums (Backfeed Magnetbabe and Emits Showers of Sparks). An ill-fated match with Wa

评语：These Aussie goofs did the whole band-in-a-bubble thing years before those MTV schnooks in Cartel and have recorded a raft of terrific new wave, n� metal, and punk whatsits that have made them heroes Down Under. D.B.

评语：With their best lineup (featuring SPIN contributing writer Mike Edison on drums), these Madrid-based scum punks, fronted by a jumbo howler named Kike Turmix, cut the blinding 1995 album Ripped to the Tits. D.B.

评语：Beautifully sung, beguiling piano pop that found a fan in Blur's Graham Coxon (who released their first seven-inch on his own label). In 2007, they boldly made their entire 100-track back catalog available for free download. DOUG BROD

评语：In the years before "emo" became a dirty word -- that'd be 1995 to 1998 -- this California outfit delivered three albums of potent, crunching self-flagellation. Their awesomely titled swan song, This Conversation Is Ending Starting Right Now, is a minor c

评语：Crest-riding harmonies, glockenspiel, and 24-piece choirs -- these indulgences can turn geniuses into delusional sandbox dwellers. But Halifax, Nova Scotia's best orchestral poppers had Ruth Minnikin's aching voice as an icy balm to keep the sunshine in c

评语：With winning Kinks/Small Faces melodies, soulful conviction, and a falsetto almost worthy of Prince, singer-guitarist Jeff Lescher launched this energetic Chicago power-pop trio in the '80s -- and is still at it today. Lovably unpolished, Green in their h

评语：The perfect band for the vaporous, self-imposed twilight that presages Ambien trips. On 2000's The Glands, the Athens, Georgia band mushed together the Kinks' crisp hookery with the Flaming Lips' astral haze, resulting in an album that's languid but never

评语：These four Brit girls were auspiciously picked to open the Sex Pistols' first reunion show in 1996, the year of Fluffy's bruised-knuckle debut/farewell. Had a great look while they lasted: cigs, fishnets, leopard-skin, peroxide, sneers. ROB TANNENBAUM

评语：Four twentysomething kids from Portland, Oregon, who looked like S.E. Hinton characters (only less scruffy) and sounded like the Buzzcocks (only less buzzy). The band was starting to field numerous tour and label offers, but tragically, there was never a

评语：After two synth-heavy R&B albums in the '80s, Marc Anthony Thompson hibernated for a decade and returned as Chocolate Genius for 1998's Black Music, a relentlessly somber, wryly confessional avant-folk-funk rebuttal to popular notions of what constituted

评语：A Howard student in love with bong hits, beer, and big busts-but disenchanted with everything else- Michael Ivey (and pals) released the astounding Play With Toys in 1992, its heavy-lidded, mumbly raps backed by live funk rock, uncleared samples, and a sl

评语：Originally tagged "the black Jesus and Mary Chain," this East London duo -- Rudi Tambala and advertising copywriter Alex Ayuli -- invented the term "dreampop" for their pointillistic aural sculptures. Ambient, psychedelic, drifting in a love-struck fugue