March 25, 2010 – With his wild onstage antics and upcoming "sleazy Detroit rock" album, My Chemical Romance's frontman is a true disciple of The Stooges. "I didn't want the girls to want to f--k me, I wanted the straight guys to want to f--k me," Way says. "I got that from Iggy." SPIN: Gerard, when did you first hear Iggy's music? GERARD WAY: This is kind of a crazy story. There was a cartoon I saw as a child called Rock & Rule. IGGY POP: Oh my God! Somebody saw it! WAY: Yeah! It had a huge impact on me. It was set in the future and starred [the music of] Iggy, Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, Cheap Trick, and Earth, Wind & Fire. POP: I remember my song was called "Pain & Suffering." [Sings] "Red wine turns to blood / A cow floats upside down in a river of mud!" WAY: It scared me, but I was drawn to it.

February 25, 2008 – When Ezra Koenig was a sophomore at Columbia University, his main extracurricular activity was his (white) rap duo, L'Homme Run. They composed and performed verbally dexterous songs with titles like "Pizza Party" and "Interracial Dating" (which reflected on finding long black hairs in the shower), and co-opted the Lacoste alligator as their official mascot. The group was meant to be funny, but they weren't a joke -- a subtle but key distinction that ultimately doomed the project. "It was hard for me to take seriously because no one else would take it seriously," Koenig says. Some of that same eyebrow-raising cultural smash-and-grab is on display in Vampire Weekend, the baby-faced Koenig's suddenly successful indie band, which appropriates African and Caribbean rhythms for its gleefully polyglot pop.

August 1, 2005 – The road to Studio 606, the new, multimillion-dollar Foo Fighters headquarters, isn't paved with gold. Rather, it's paved with common asphalt, marred by rush-hour traffic, and dotted with all the symbols of suburban sprawl: take-out chicken joints, chain drugstores, a drive-thru Starbucks. On the heels of the band's 2002 back-from-the-brink-of-breakup album, One by One (like all Foo releases, certified platinum), singer/guitarist Dave Grohl could've set down roots anywhere. After all, Foo Fighters are that rarest of breeds—a remarkably consistent, longlasting rock band—and their global success, not to mention Grohl's net worth from his tenure in a certain grunge trio, afforded the band the opportunity to build their playground wherever they fancied.

October 6, 2004 – THEY'RE ARTY SCOTTISH HIPSTERS WHO REFER TO THEMSELVES AS A "WEE GANG"AND WRITE SONGS ABOUT HORNY BOYS CAVORITING IN DANCE CLUBS. YOU'D THINKTHEY'D BE ABOUT AS POPULAR IN THE AMERICAN-ROCK LOCKER ROOM AS THE CASTOF QUEER EYE . BUT WITH THEIR SURPRISE RADIO HIT "TAKE ME OUT," FRANZ FERDINAND DARE TO CHARM THE BACKWARD-BASEBALL-CAP MASSES. Philadelphia-in all of its busted, blue-collar glory-has been calledmany things in its two-century-plus history, but "cool" has never beenone of them. Making Time, a semi-monthly party held at Shampoo, a(barely) converted warehouse, wants to change all of that. Located justpast a highway in the gentrifying Northern Liberties neighborhood, it'sa sprawling structure with five DJ booths, several bars, and anopen-air hot tub.

September 14, 2004 – My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way--with his ghostly pallor, longunwashed hair, and goth boots--would probably always look out of placesipping iced coffee at a café in a yuppified section of Brooklyn. Buthe looks downright alien in his trademark ripped and stitched blackleather jacket on an 80-degree spring day. "Oh, I'm perfectlycomfortable," he says. "I got used to leather early on. Wearing it mademe feel like the person I was supposed to be onstage." That person is a shrieking, charismatic screamo star who leads his bandthrough relentless, cinematic stormers with titles like "You Know WhatThey Do to Guys Like Us in Prison." "People stopped telling storieswith their music," says Way, 27.

August 9, 2004 – JennyLewis and Blake Sennett are two of the most successful child actorsever. Consider the following: Neither one is an irredeemabledrug-addled lout. And Tina Yothers never made an album as good as More Adventurous,the third from Lewis and Sennett's Los Angeles--based quartet, RiloKiley. "I should be in rehab," Lewis jokes. "Or at least wandering thestreets, barefoot, looking for Corey Feldman!" On MoreAdventurous (recorded, like 2002's The Execution of All Things, withBright Eyes producer Mike Mogis), the 28-year-old Lewis (Troop Beverly Hills)cements her status as the indie-rock Loretta Lynn, singing gorgeous,countrified pop songs about love, war, and love as war. MeanwhileSennett (Nickelodeon's Salute Your Shorts), bassist Pierre"Duke" de Reeder, and drummer Jason Boesel act as able stagehands,shifting from radio-ready bombast to intimate folk and electro.

August 2, 2004 – Taking Back SundayWhere You Want to Be(Victory) If hip-hop is the CNN of the streets, then emo is the InstantMessenger of the suburbs. Taking Back Sunday won a passionate fan baseby understanding this better than most of their overwrought peers. Theband's debut, 2002's Tell All Your Friends, was like a teenagewalkie-talkie passed between screamers/songwriters Adam Lazzara andJohn Nolan, burbling with tons of he said/she said chitchat. But aftersome totally emo intramural hanky-panky, Nolan and original bassistShaun Cooper bailed on both the band and the friendship.

June 28, 2004 – Nothinglike the constant gloom of Portland, Oregon, and the prospect of lifeas a manicured folk act to transform a couple of mild-mannered indierockers into slobbering, punk-thrashing freaks. At least that's whathappened to the Thermals' Hutch Harris and Kathy Foster. After a yearof tweaking their precious acoustic debut (2002's Hutch and Kathy),they went back to the basement, plugged in, and trimmed the songs downto two minutes. The result: instant audio therapy. Last year's More Parts Per Million "probably cost between $10 and $15," says Harris. "And people were bragging about the White Stripes record only costing $4,000!" The Thermals' second album, the exuberant Fuckin A(produced by Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla), sounds almost asgritty as its predecessor, but the fizzy new tunes have more snap andpop.

April 10, 2004 – The San Diego Freeway-a.k.a. the 405-is a drab, twistingexpanse known for bottlenecks, exhaust, and massive frustration. It'sthe quickest route to Hollywood, but in many ways, it's the slowest.You could idle all day, stuck between the center of everything andnowhere at all. I was on the 405 one sunny day last January, listeningto "405," a lilting song about the vagaries of distance-both physicaland emotional-from Death Cab for Cutie's second album, 2000's We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes. And the song was on the radio, not my CD player. "Indie 103" appeared on Los Angeles radio a few months ago, acorporate experiment in counter-counterprogramming. Suddenly, it'spossible to hear a four-year-old song from an indie-rock band high upon the FM dial.

March 31, 2004 – You can only break a heart so many ways. That's the problemfacing today's glut of emo bands–open-tuned guitars,weepy lyrics, and fan sing-alongs won't separate you from themaudlin pack. To combat this musical malaise, a new crop ofinstrumentally ambitious groups has emerged, bringing a classicalsensibility to teenage breakup anthems.