Phoenix

Phoenix made its first indelible mark on pop culture a decade ago when it was the occasional backing band for Air. But in 2010 the French quartet is more well known for creating pop music for people who really hate pop music. The band's tunes have been featured in an obscene number of movie adverts, car commercials and TV shows and have also appeared in two Sofia Coppola movies. (Coppola, whose boyfriend is vocalist Thomas Mars, also gave the band a cameo in Marie Antoinette.) After a couple years out of the limelight, Phoenix exploded back on the scene in 2009 with its fourth album, the Grammy winning mega-smash, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. "1901," the album's undeniable standout, peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard alternative charts earlier this year — and any music blog worth its pageviews ranked "1901" and "Lisztomania" as two of the best songs of 2009.