Yeah Yeah Yeahs Cool It Down

IT’S MORE THAN 20 years since the Yeah Yeah Yeahs emerged as part of a new millennium resurgence in edgy, post-punk alternative American rock. Formed in New York by singer Karen O, drummer Brian Chase and guitarist/ keyboard player Nick Zinner, the trio’s earliest gigs were supporting the Strokes and White Stripes, which provided them with an audience that was already willing and able when the band eventually released its first album, Fever To Tell in 2003.

One of the great classic debuts with Zinner’s razor-sharp riffing perfectly complementing Karen O’s combative but seductive vocals, it earned a Grammy nomination as best alternative music album. So, too, did the follow ups, Show Your Bones (2007) and It’s Blitz (2010) and with the demise of the White Stripes and the Strokes on hiatus, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were left as the smartest standard bearers of the 21st-century indie revival.