United States of America

Led by keyboardist-composer Joseph Byrd and featuring the perfectly witchy vocals of Dorothy Moskowitz, the United States of America made music wholly unlike that of the other bands of its day - or any day, for that matter. On the band's sole, self-titled 1968 album, the group draws on Byrd's background in the avant garde and crosses proto-electronica (early synthesizers, ring modulator) with psychedelia for a sound that even today remains both strange and futuristic.