They've basically outlasted everyone from their generation and cemented their position as the unofficial house band at the Whisky a Go-Go. Guns will endure, with or without Tracii Guns (now reunited with his namesake band, at least for now). If there's no expiration date for the Second Amendment, then L.A. Once you get beyond their squareness and obsession with floral patterns, Warpaint are probably the most musically complex indie band on this list. Warpaint's Theresa Wayman Credit: Mathew Tucciaroneįor nearly a decade, they've been L.A.'s polished answer to Phish, which made them the perfect vehicle for KCRW's gentrification of rock. music scene of the past decade, so bands like Guns N’ Roses and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who mostly affected the scene in the ’80s and ’90s, won't be listed here, though a few survivors from earlier eras who have stayed active and relevant made the cut. I lassoed my rockism by asking for help from a few tastemakers, who forced me begrudgingly to include a few bands that would never have made my personal playlist. The only snobbery you'll sniff out is my belief that the electric guitar is America's greatest cultural export. In looking back at the last decade of L.A.

The alleged cultural bankruptcy of rock & roll never reached our shores, where we now have more venues for live music than we've had in decades, built on the backs of rock bands who met at DIY spaces like the Smell, or found their voice during buzzworthy residencies at the Echo, or kept punk alive at Alex's Bar. In L.A., the past decade has been dominated by a brand of rock that experiments with GarageBand and shamanic psychedelia, while augmenting punk with Chicano and feminist rage. Those same pretentious editors and critics never saw Ty Segall shred four nights in a row at the Echo, or felt the anxiety when FIDLAR nearly ignited a riot one night in 2012, or witnessed the religious revival of a Growlers show, who have became The Grateful Dead for bleached-hair millennials. It's a canard because it assumes that rock & roll, in its refusal to become “hip,” has become pastiche, or that today's rock bands give a shit about pandering to youth culture, 20-something music critics or Vice editors. The popularity of hip-hop and EDM are indicators that the Fender Strat is no longer in vogue with the youth. It's a pervasive canard in music: Rock is dead.

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