Started in 1999 by members of Les Savy Fav, NYC's Frenchkiss Records is one of the premiere independent record labels active today. They're also home to The Hold Steady, Tangiers, The Dodos, and many more bands you'll be happy to discover -- find some of our favorites below!

The Best of Frenchkiss Records by Various Artists

The perfect starting point -- a digital-only sampler featuring tracks from Les Savy Fav, The Hold Steady, Rahim, Tangiers, Thunderbirds Are Now!, Tangiers, Detachment Kit, Turing Machine, The Bloodthirsty Lovers, Ex Models, Sean Na Na, Smoke And Smoke, and S Prcss...

Of This Blood by Detachment Kit

Detachment Kit are a Midwest foursome who, with their second album, bring a lonely grace and emotionality to the usually aloof realm of post-punk. This is mostly thanks to singer Ian Menard's alternating whispers and caterwauling which takes the detachment (yes, haha) of post-punk and forces it out in not unwelcome whined screams. Among sometimes fuzzed, often melodic guitars and coupled with a lovely lyricism, the effect is poignancy without the preciousness. [Fazed]

The Family Myth by Tangiers

The band's sound has been known to be a garden variety of hook-laden pop, garage rock and some proto-punk tendencies, but the direction that Tangiers takes on The Family Myth adds some dark baroque and a touch of twee to the stew. But it's all good. ...I wouldn't go as far to describe this album as "worldly," but it does contain a certain amount of mysterious appeal -- and that enigma makes the album that much more captivating. The Family Myth is a curiously good time from beginning to end. [Prefix Magazine]

Separation Sunday by The Hold Steady

[Singer Craig] Finn's songs wheel precariously from one unhinged lyrical idea to the next, almost never stopping for choruses or going out of their way to fit into any sort of structure, but the band plays these songs like long-lost fist-in-the-air classic rock anthems. It's well-schooled in every bar-rock cliché, and executes these moves with joy and conviction: the pick-slide before the climax, the weeping Hammond organ on the bridge, the pregnant pause before the big riff kicks back in. ...This stuff would sound great behind just about any garage-rock hack, but it turns Finn's dirtbag chronicles into something epic and huge and molten and beautiful. [Pitchfork, 8.7/10]

The Delicate Seam by The Bloodthirsty Lovers

While it's apparent [singer Dave] Shouse hasn't lost his obsession with all things analog, the wheezing synths and vocoders are a nice complement to Shouse's stoned southern falsetto. It's as if Gary Numan wandered into a Saturday-night fish fry. ...The Lovers really hit their stride on "Now You Know." When Shouse yells "give me drop dead rock 'n' roll," it's the sound of defiance in the face of a collapsing dream. ...While the Lovers sound like a band getting to know each other on The Delicate Seam, they also sound like they're having a hell of a lotta fun.[Harp Magazine]

Let's Stay Friends by Les Savy Fav

Let's Stay Friends is the first album of new songs in six years from indie-rock madcaps Les Savy Fav, yet it sounds like a band that's just hitting a peak. These Brooklyn-via-Providence, Rhode Island, dudes veer between art-punk guitar and disco drums, managing to fuse Fugazi circa In On The Kill Taker with Chic circa Risque. They built their legend as a furious live band, thanks largely to Tim Harrington's human-tornado energy; with his grizzly beard and Falstaffian bulk, he can dance all over a crowd's heads while making them shout along with verse like "Botoxed in bobby socks! Cold as ice! All the boys were like white on rice!" [Rolling Stone]

Visiter by The Dodos

On Visiter, Dodos guitarist Meric Long alternates between fingerpicking and breakneck strumming while playing in confounding alternate tunings. Logan Kroeber's clattering, locomotive percussion (which includes shoes outfitted with tambourines) is every bit a lead instrument as Long's guitar, and a big reason the band's music has garnered comparisons to the less abstract moments of Animal Collective and the output of other new-primitivist bands like High Places and Yeasayer... One of the most welcoming (and welcome) records of 2008 so far. [Pitchfork, 8.5/10]

Chunk Of Change by Passion Pit

The band is the brainchild of Michael Angelakos, and fans of MGMT and all things electro-synth-pop jam are sure to dig it. According to sources, Angelakos was taking a class in American fashion at Emerson College and stumbled upon the term 'passion pit' - slang for drive-in movie theaters where kids would make out. Passion Pit has opened for Death Cab For Cutie, Girl Talk, These New Puritans and more. They also won the WFNX/Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll as the Best New Local Act of 2008. [My Old Kentucky Blog]

Ideal Lives by Rahim

Rahim is a trio that had gotten the opportunity to work with producer extraordinaire J Robbins. As a result of listening to this album, you get the feeling that the band and Robbins feed off each other by creating an eclectic album that flows from beginning to end, leaving a path of sweet harmonies mixed with some DC-influenced post-punk. ...Rahim just picks up where bands of the past have left off and where bands of the present can never seem to genuinely pick up. While I am sure J Robbins gave the band invaluable guidance, the chemistry between the members of Rahim is quite apparent from the beginning to the end of the album. [Delusions of Adequacy]