Discovery

• Genre: Alt Dance

About

Daft Punk tower over their indie dance acolytes like, well, a giant, gleaming pyramid. So it's only appropriate that some starry-eyed statesiders would eventually borrow not only the French duo's filters, but even one of their album titles. That would be Discovery, perhaps better known as the duo comprised of Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot's Wes Miles. (Perhaps to compensate, they named their debut album simply LP.) Their buzzing, gleaming layers of filtered synthesizers would be unthinkable without Daft Punk's influence, but they take just as much inspiration from contemporary R&B, favoring jiggling, syncopated drum-machine beats and scads of breathless falsetto, often run through vocal effects like Auto-Tune. It's more than just musical tourism, though -- Discovery's wide-eyed approach to pop music has a quick wit and plenty of homespun charm.