Daft Punk's beginnings can be traced all the way back to eighth grade, when Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo first met. They began composing music together in Bangalter's bedroom in 1993, and in 1995, they produced "Da Funk," a smash that combined the fledgling thud of G-funk with the bubbling, rubbery sounds of European dance music to create a smash that sounds as enormous, forceful, and startling today as it did then.

Homework, their first formal album, was released in 1997 and included the song "Around the World," which is still a fantastic tune, as well as visuals made by Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Roman Coppola, as one would expect. They got some press coverage. They went on a short tour. Then they decided on anonymity. They donned helmets when they made public appearances. Even after the publication of another outstanding album, Discovery, in 2001, they hardly ever appeared in public.

The first song on Discovery is "One More Time," a rush of pure ecstasy and one of the best examples of dance music's ability to make you completely forget about your thoughts and stay, pleasurably, in your body. Kanye West would eventually turn another Discovery song, "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," into a success of his own by mostly ignoring it. You could argue that Daft Punk were the most pure, uncompromising, and beloved artists of the entire era of electronic music, which runs from the early 1990s to the present day.