Bloc Party

In the mid-2000s, Bloc Party emerged with a sound and attitude that built on the fashionable retro art-rock coming from acts ranging from New York City's The Strokes to Scotland's Franz Ferdinand. But while Bloc Party's prickly, angular music fit in with the sounds of their cohorts, frontman Kele Okereke gave the band an individuality the others lacked. With a voice that conjures the cockiness of the Fall's Mark E. Smith, the twitchiness of the Voidoids' Richard Hell and the anguish of the Cure's Robert Smith, Okereke and company created an urgent new punk rock for the disaffected emo crowd. The band's second album, A Weekend in the City, released in 2007, shot to Number One on the Independent Albums chart and Number 12 on the Billboard 200.

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