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MTV's late-night alternative-music show, two hours of videos the daytime rotation wouldn't touch, from Hüsker Dü and Morrissey to the world premiere of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." For a generation that stayed up for it, the 1990s hosts Lewis Largent and the encyclopedic Matt Pinfield were the gatekeepers of what counted as cool.
"And we'll all float on, okay?" — the shrugging, off-kilter singalong that carried indie rock onto every radio station, mall speaker, and burned CD of 2004. A decade-old cult band from Washington state suddenly had the most reassuring song in America.
The Killers' debut single — written after Brandon Flowers found his girlfriend in a Las Vegas bar with another man. Released in 2003, it peaked at No. 10 on both the US and UK charts, and then simply never left: by 2026 it had logged more than 500 weeks on the UK singles chart, a communal scream at weddings and stadiums that outlived its own decade.
Four guys, eight treadmills, one continuous take. OK Go's "Here It Goes Again" video cost about $4,000, was shot in Damian Kulash's sister's house in Orlando, and went up on YouTube on July 31, 2006, when the site was just starting to take off. It won a Grammy and showed the music business what a viral video could do.
A seven-note riff that sounds exactly like a bass — played by a band with no bassist. "Seven Nation Army" peaked at #76 on the Hot 100, then quietly conquered every stadium on earth. Millions chant it at games today without knowing they're singing The White Stripes.
The show that made indie rock cool, gave us Chrismukkah, and turned Newport Beach into the center of the universe. Josh Schwartz's The O.C. launched a thousand emo haircuts and a meme that won't die.
![Video thumbnail — The Postal Service - Such Great Heights [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0wrsZog8qXg/maxresdefault.jpg)
Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello made an album by shipping burned CD-Rs between Seattle and Los Angeles, named the project after the method, and never made another. Give Up went platinum on Sub Pop, "Such Great Heights" opened Grey's Anatomy and sold UPS ads, and the real Postal Service sent a cease-and-desist.
Five New Yorkers who met through prep schools and made guitar rock sound urgent again. Is This It, cut in an East Village basement in 2001 to sound like "a band from the past that took a time trip into the future," set off the garage-rock revival, had its cover and tracklist changed for America after 9/11, and topped NME's list of the decade.