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Music

LCD Soundsystem is Reuniting—Here's 5 More 00s Dance-Punk Acts We Want Back Now

From New York and San Fran to London and Paris, millennial hipster bands will rise again.
Photo by Ruvan Wijesooriya

With LCD Soundsystem officially confirmed to reunite for Coachella 2016, it seems that the ever-shortening time we need before evoking nostalgia now clocks in at around 48 months. Following their much ballyhooed end in 2011—with scores of sold-out farewell shows, a live album, and a documentary about those shows—the band's decision to reform has, by Murphy's own admission on the band's website, cause some uneasy feelings for friends and fans. Still, it's a great opportunity to revisit the heady era that spawned the LCD Soundsystem juggernaut, along whole host of similarly minded dance-punk bands that sprung up around that time. And though none of the rest of these acts achieved the generation-defining, festival-headlining stature of LCD Soundsystem, there's still a handful that we'd also like to reunite, if only to revisit a time in the early years of the new millennium when everyone was selling their guitars for turntables. Here's five of them.

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1. THE RAPTURE

The original DFA darlings, this New York four-piece was responsible for the record label's first release and subsequent first hit "House Of Jealous Lovers." The 2002 tune was a global hit, pulling dance music tastemakers out of the overly referential electroclash cul-de-sac with slashing guitars, shrieking vocals, and disco drums that used Gang of Four as their major touchstone—and dance-punk was born.

The band went on to make three full albums, including the excellent Pieces Of People We Love. Bassist Mattie Safer left the group in 2009, before the recording of the group's final album, In The Grace Of Your Love in 2011. The Rapture finally ended in 2014, with DFA co-founder Jonathan Galkin telling Self-Titled Mag, "Feel free to go to press with this headline: 'Did the Rapture Break Up and Not Tell Anyone?'" leaving the door slightly, tantalizingly, open for a comeback.

2. Test Icicles

Far less likely to reform is this British punk-inspired three-piece whose brief stint as UK press darlings has long been overshadowed by its members' subsequent careers. Most notable is Dev Hynes, who after a brief stop recording as Lightspeed Champion now writes and produces for A-list acts like Basement Jaxx, the Chemical Brothers, and Nelly Furtado (and makes his own florid soul records) under the name Blood Orange. Rory Attwell and Sam Mehran, the band's co-founders, also went on to varying success—launching new projects like Warm Brains, KASMs, and RAT:ATT:AGG (for Attwell) and Outer Limitz (for Mehran). Between all of these endeavors, it seems a long shot for the trio to team up again.

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3. UFFIE

This party-rocking ingenue stole our hearts with her 2006 single, "Pop The Glock," which was punk in the same way Fab Five Freddy rapping over Blondie was in the 80s. The song was re-released in 2009 to accompany her one and only album, Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans, which came in 2010, after years of delays, including difficulty clearing samples with a notoriously prickly Lou Reed. Despite the long delay, we'd still be willing to give her another shot with some new tunes. Unfortunately the now mother of two born Anna-Catherine Hartley has deleted her Uffie Twitter account and later told a fan site that she was "moving on with different projects under different aliases."

4. RADIO 4

The most truly punk of all the acts on the dance-punk spectrum, this New York crew took their name from a Public Image Ltd. song and sonically referenced influential punk acts like Mission of Burma and Gang of Four, the later of whom basically defined the dance-punk template that everyone followed. They released dozens of recordings, mostly for stalwart American dance music label Astralwerks, between 2004 and 2007, and last appeared as a full band as part of the 2012 CBGB Festival in New York, where they debuted an as-yet unreleased new song called "Dance To The Underground." Members Anthony Roman and Dave Milone occasionally continued to perform together with Mod (from Elefant) as Orange Cassettes, making a reunion more likely than it seems.

5. OUT HUD

While the lineup for LCD's reunion isn't announced yet, occasional Soundsystem bassist Tyler Pope might want to consider pulling double duty by also re-teaming with his original Bay Area band, Out Hud. The group gave the dance-punk scene a feel-good West Coast counterpart to the cynical posturing more prevalent on the East Coast. It also gave the world the seductive disco licks of guitarist Nic Offer, who could bring along his other band, the still active !!!, for a three-group dance-punk super show we'd all die for.