Arthur Lee’s band Love combines it all: R&B, rock, folk-rock, and garage, with odd, dark lyrics. Yet it maintains a humorous edge. This is timeless music that people will always come back to. Hell, the man even turned on Hendrix!

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Sparks’ album Kimono My House is a demented mix of hard rock, pop, glam, new wave, and baroque pop. Why this record never caught on in the States I’ll never know. The songs will get stuck in your head and prevent you from sleeping. Oh yeah, and the keyboard player has a nice mustache too, as evidenced by this track above — This Town Ain’t Big Enough.

Only a band from Akron, Ohio could come up with the whole de-evolution theory. Apparently Devo had business cards that read ‘Chinese computer rock ‘n’ roll, scientific music + vis. arts for beautiful mutants’. This track, Jocko Homo, is one of my favorites of theirs.

Shortstack are a Washington DC band that not many people know about outside of the the city. They recently released an EP of covers with some sweet choices on there — The Kinks, Captain Beefheart, and The Pupils, among others. Once again a band takes different styles, sounds, and time periods, and owns it like an extra finger.

Listen to the Shortstack track, House On Fire.