The Cramps

The Cramps cooked up their own genre rather than fitting into someone else's. Formed in New York in 1976 by husband-and-wife core Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, the band welded raw 1950s rockabilly to the abrasive energy of punk and coated the whole thing in B-movie horror, sexual provocation, and a deep reverence for obscure American trash culture. The result was psychobilly - a subgenre the band essentially invented and then spent three decades perfecting across nine studio albums. They played their last show before Interior's death in February 2009 dissolved the lineup for good, leaving behind one of the more singular catalogs in American rock.