Underworld

Underworld don't write simple dance songs for late-night DJ sets; they churn out arena-ready anthems, the kind that can — and have — brought thousands to their feet within seconds. Case in point: the plate-tossing, fist-pumping behavior that'll ensue in your living room and kitchen after hearing the hands-in-the-air heights and tension-tightening lows of "Born Slippy (Nuxx)," the head-encircling vocal hooks of "Cowgirl," the winding, subterranean passages of "Pearls Girl," and the brain-jostling electro of "Jumbo."

About the group's world-renowned stage show: while we can't project their eye-boggling visuals onto your bedroom wall, our Next Steps slips some live ones in when you least expect it.

Good luck keeping up with the fearsome pacing of Underworld's endorphin-flooding live album, Everything, Everything. It'll leave you wheezing unless you're in tip-top shape, especially when spastic piano melodies hijack stunted beats ("Push Upstairs"), synth lines light up a cut like Las Vegas ("Cups"), or DJ Darren Emerson sends Karl Hyde's vocal hooks ("Crazy! Crazy! Crazy!") careening across a bed of crisscrossing beats ("Pearls Girl").

All of that hooting and hollering leaves out a couple key components: Underworld's remixes and soundtrack work, both of which pop up in our Deep Cuts.

Listen to Underworld's twitchy treatment of Depeche Mode's "Barrel of a Gun" and your heart just might explode in time with its "Hard Mix" of combustible beats and jackhammer basslines. That's why we treated their Deep Cuts like a carefully crafted DJ set — one with cascading valleys (the sweeping strings and film-score melodies of "Primrose Hill," the snappy drums and slo-mo synths of "Sola Sistim"), pulse-spiking peaks (the steady build of "Mo Move," a wicked, woofer-wrecking remix of "Bruce Lee"), and quite a few selections caught somewhere in between (the spacey funk of "Luetin," the woozy loops of "Glam Bucket").

When vocalist Karl Hyde and guitarist Rick Smith failed at their first band — a well-funded new wave act called Freur — the duo didn't quit the business. Hyde, for one, worked with Debbie Harry and Prince, only to find himself right back with his old art-school mate for Underworld's first defining discs. That'd be 1993's Dubnobasswithmyheadman and 1996's Second Toughest In the Infants, albums that attracted a crossover crowd without resorting to rock clichés or tired pop techniques. Acid house, techno, dub, dashes of psychedelia — they all play a role in Underworld's dance floor-decimating epics, singles that have come to define exactly what's been right with electronica for the past two decades. (Come to think of it, both "Dark and Long" and "Dirty Epic" could double as the title of Underworld's autobiography.)