White Stripes

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• Genre: Garage Rock Revival
• Hometown: Detroit
• White Stripes Website

About

Minimalist, stripped down, raw -- call it what you want. There's no denying the Detroit-based combination of Jack and Meg White packs an underhanded punch with their fierce, swaggering, cacophonous trash. After building a solid foundation of dedicated fans in the underground circuit, the group somehow found an audience in the mainstream, garnering radio and MTV exposure on their third album with explosive tracks like "Fell in Love With a Girl" and "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground." Jack White's guitar style began to grow out of the electrified, bottleneck blues style and into something more white-hot, like Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page melding into one. The group's fourth album, Elephant, proved to be even more of a success, with "Seven Nation Army" providing a riff that was almost instantly recognizable. Increasing critical acclaim set expectations high for their fifth album, the diverse, piano-driven Get Behind Me, Satan. Meg and Jack followed that up with the irresistible Icky Thump, a return to straightforward rock that was one of the high points of '07.

- Jon Pruett