The Go! Team

The sound whipped up by the Go! Team is an effervescent blend of indie rock guitars, police show themes, hip-hop beats, funky marching bands, and schoolyard chants built on samples and then augmented by live instrumentation. The main architect of the group's sound is producer and guitarist Ian Parton, who is joined by a rotating cast of singers and musicians, most notably singer/rapper Ninja. The 2004 album Thunder, Lightning, Strike was the band's grand debut, knocking the blogosphere on its collective ear and setting the group's template in stone. Though they have strayed from it a little -- most notably on 2015's shoegaze-inspired The Scene Between -- albums made two decades after their formation (like 2023's Get Up Sequences, Pt. 2) show the same amount of tuneful and joyous energy and still sound box-fresh.