15. Radio 4 — “Enemies Like This”
Best known for “Dance to the Underground” — a great little song in it’s own right — I’ve always been partial to “Enemies Like This,” if only for how devastating the percussion is. That guitar is as alive as it comes, too.
14. Moving Units — “Between Us & Them”
Moving Units never made much of a dent, which is a shame, because “Between Us & Them” is one of the more underrated dance-punk songs out there. They’ve since reinvented themselves as a synth-pop band, releasing Neurotic Exotic in 2013.
13. Louis XIV — “Finding Out True Love Is Blind”
Post-The Best Little Secrets Are Kept Secret, the San Diego (I would have sworn they were English) act has since shifted to a mostly straight-up rock sound, but “Finding Out True Love Is Blind” was the cockiest post-punk track around. By no coincidence, it was also the band’s best. They broke up in 2009, but reunited by 2013.
12. The Bravery — “An Honest Mistake”
It’s hard to remember that The Bravery were threatening to be as big as The Killers at one point. More songs like “An Honest Mistake” and the moody-with-a-capital-M rockers might just have done it. Last year, frontman Sam Endicott indicated there were no plans for The Bravery moving forward.
11. The Futureheads — “Meantime”
The Futureheads were, in a lot of ways, the prototypical band of the movement, exemplifying all the best (and worst) qualities. From their self-titled debut, “Meantime” is a breakup ballad with coiled percussion and guitar hooks aplenty, tethered to the year 2004 like few others. 2010 brought The Chaos, but little else since.
10. Les Savy Fav — “The Sweat Descends”
Few post-punk bands championed the visceral energy that Les Savy Fav did on 2004’s Inches and standout “The Sweat Descends,” most of their colleagues keeping it cool, calm and collected. But that’s also just what makes the band so special. The group has stayed relatively quiet since 2010’s Room for Ruin, though a few of the members can be spotted nightly as part of the Late Night with Seth Myers band.
9. Klaxons — “Gravity’s Rainbow”
Klaxons took dance-punk to its logical extreme, amping up demented, club-fried bangers to the point that some of the band’s 2007 debut, Myths of the Near Future, quit resembling post-punk at all. But “Gravity’s Rainbow” did, steered by a zippy guitar line given free roam over an otherwise tightly constructed pop hook. The band released a new album, Love Frequency, in 2014, but called it quits after a pair of shows at the very top of 2015.
8. Editors — “Munich”
Credit Editors for finding a way to thrive nearly a decade removed from their 2006 debut The Back Room. The dramatic U2 impersonations they do on 2013’s “Sugar” and “The Weight” won the band a whole new set of fans, but nothing they do will ever top the pairing of Tom Smith’s booming voice over the rapid-fire guitar in “Munich.”
7. We Are Scientists — “Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt”
We Are Scientists just got it. They were having fun, first and foremost, and without getting stuck up in presenting themselves as the coolest dudes at the party, they made the funnest song playing on its stereo. With Love and Squalor was full of them (“This Scene Is Dead” is just as good), and the band is still plugging along, releasing TV en Français in 2014.
6. Tokyo Police Club — “Nature of the Experiment”
Tokyo Police Club has a less raggedy, more alt-pop-radio-friendly look in the present (heard as recently as 2014’s Forcefield) than the nerdy, off-kilter mindset that drove its debut A Lesson in Crime. They wear it pretty well, too, even if the lo-fi charm of the zig-zagging guitars of “Nature of the Experiment” has mostly been tamed. Live and let go.
