Yo La Tengo

Throughout its 22-year history, Hoboken trio Yo La Tengo has been making music that's like a quiet storm brewing off the coastal horizon -- one that casts ominously dark, turbulent clouds and stirs up the potential for a really nasty downpour, only to be broken up onshore and produce a light, refreshing shower.

Yo La Tengo's music has maintained a sense of innocence with whispery male/female vocals shared by guitarist Ira Kaplan and wife/drummer Georgia Hubley, whose harmonies and melodies are influenced by pop groups from the musically tamer mid-'60s. But there is a dark side to the band as well, with guitars textually drenched in a scourge of feedback and a rhythmic, stripped-down backbeat that has garnered Yo La Tengo and Hubley comparisons to The Velvet Underground and their female drummer, Moe Tucker. The group has so perfectly shaded and blended a palette of disparate sounds together, it only takes one listen to know their signature sound.