Pixies

Pixies formed in Boston in 1986 when Black Francis and Joey Santiago dropped out of UMass Amherst, recruited bassist Kim Deal through a newspaper ad seeking someone "into Hüsker Dü and Peter, Paul and Mary," and named themselves after a word Santiago found by flipping through a dictionary. Their first five records, from Come On Pilgrim through Trompe le Monde, fused punk aggression with surf-rock shimmer and Francis's lyrics about extraterrestrials, biblical violence, and mutilation, producing a loud-quiet-loud dynamic that Nirvana, Radiohead, and a generation of imitators would spend the next decade trying to reverse-engineer. The band broke up in 1993 with little commercial success in the States but a fervent following in Europe. A 2004 reunion sold out arenas worldwide, and the lineup has shifted since Deal's departure in 2013, cycling through Kim Shattuck and Paz Lenchantin before settling on Emma Richardson in 2024. Ten studio albums deep, their most recent being The Night the Zombies Came, Pixies entered 2026 touring a 40th-anniversary run with shows selling out before most fans finished refreshing the page.