Foals

Foals make expansive indie rock built on dense arrangements of danceable rhythms and punchy guitars. Formed in Oxford in the mid-2000s, the band emerged in the wake of the breakup of frontman Yannis Philippakis and percussionist Jack Bevan’s math-rock group, The Edmund Fitzgerald. Early singles, like 2007’s “Mathletics”, have a notably dance-punk bent—a reaction to the more serious sounds heard in Oxford during that era. Early attention led the band to record their debut LP, 2008’s high-energy Antidotes, with TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek. Their follow-up, 2010’s Total Life Forever, took inspiration from futurist Ray Kurzweil’s theories and had a far mellower vibe, as illustrated by the lush atmospheres of “Spanish Sahara”. Since then, they’ve dabbled in heavier alt-rock (2015’s What Went Down), made a sprawling two-part record (2019’s Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost) and even crafted a dub version of one of their albums (2023’s Life Is Dub), retaining a spirit of boundary-pushing experimentation under the indie-rock umbrella.