Now that the wall between rock purism and the digital dancefloor has been reduced to mere rubble, a suite of newer, harder, brighter, faster bands are getting down to the business at hand: having a good time. This week, three 20-something Frenchmen become the voice of a generation… just not their own.

Fittingly, The Teenagers met in high school in the bucolic town of Sèvres; just six miles outside Paris, it’s an area more famous for porcelain manufacture than indie-pop bands. Every Saturday afternoon, they would gather around to catch the latest installment of trashy American TV shows. Above all, they loved Beverly Hills, 90210. While Shannon Doherty’s badass Brenda was the favorite of lead singer Quentin Delafon, he also had a soft spot for Tori Spelling. “She had the wonky boob thing,” he muses lovingly. “That’s what happens when you get your boobs done when you are 15.”

The Teenagers have since parlayed this half-ironic taste for American kitsch into a viable career, cheekily expressing the nervy angst and budding sexuality of the tragically-under-21 set in songs like “Sunset Beach” and “Starlett Johansson.” Not bad for a band that was accidentally conceived during a drunken winter’s night in 2005 by Dorian Dumont (guitars/synths), Michael Szpiner (bass), and Delafon, who had never even thought of making music before. MySpace success and a bidding war followed, and the group ended up on cool-kid British label Merok Records (who also discovered Crystal Castles and Klaxons) before being offered an album deal by XL Recordings.

Their debut LP, Reality Check, carefully preserves the DIY aesthetic of their French demos, though they’ve since moved to East London and begun working with a producer named Lexx. Dumont wrote all the music on the record, but the wanton, sexy lyrics–which express the unbearable lightness of being underage–are a collaboration between all three members. On “Fuck Nicole,” the first track they recorded, Delafon channels Transformer-era Lou Reed, talk-singing about a self-obsessed girl destined to OD from too much partying. Their signature tune, “Homecoming,” tells the story of an international romance gone wrong with an unforgettable chorus: “I fucked my American cunt,” says a blasé Delafon, followed by a sweet-voiced American girl, who counters “I loved my English romance.”

The guys have adapted to being onstage quickly–they’ve been touring like mad and aren’t stopping anytime soon. On stage, a mustachioed Delafon embodies the sweeter side of the sleazy Frenchman stereotype with his quirky dance moves, charming audiences in their young 20s and, when venues allow, real live teens. “I think they have less boundaries about behaving socially and they want just to have fun and jump around,” says Delafon of their fondness for playing to the under-21s.

While their signature sound is more rooted in rock ‘n’ roll thrash, The Teenagers–who have been remixed by fellow Kitsuné-ites Passions, Guns ‘N’ Bombs, and Tepr–are proud supporters of the homegrown electro scene. “It really gives a new credibility to the French music,” Delafon says. Their association with the Gallic dance revolution may have helped their popularity, but they’ve got their own niche: soundtracking pimple-faced make-out sessions the world over.

Don’t Stop The Rock Part 1: Cut Copy
Don’t Stop The Rock Part 2: Does It Offend You, Yeah?
Don’t Stop The Rock Part 3: Late of the Pier

After the first few eerie tones echo forth on Eliot Lipp’s newest album, The Outside (Mush), one gets the sense that Lipp’s “outside” is not so much a sunny day spent at the park, but more an intruder’s vantage point; a hidden place from which someone might peer in on some heavily guarded area. Rather than emulating summery birdsong, the synths on The Outside evoke a feeling of trespassing, with the tones pinging out a security grid in an ’80s spy flick, or maybe soundtracking a space-shuttle launch to send Afrika Bambataa to the moon. Over the years, Lipp, the Brooklyn-based electro-hip-hop specialist has amassed a number of synths, and here he tells us which ones were most vital to crafting his fifth album.

1. Roland SH-101
The SH-101 is a pretty popular synth and it has a very familiar sound. I use it a lot for blips and bleeps, and also long sustaining notes. If you mess with the parameters enough, you can get it to sound like a piano, upright bass, or even a TB-303 (sorta). And it has a sequencer + CV. I started making “The Meaning” by programming a sequence on the 101 and triggering it with my TR-606.

2. MFB Synth 2
Just so you know, I bought mine way before Richard Devine or Telefon Tel Aviv got ’em (biters!). But seriously, this is a little secret weapon. It’s an all-analog mono-synth that’s homemade by some dude in Berlin. I used it on at least half of the tracks on The Outside, like for the really wet-sounding loop in “The Area.” It has MIDI capability, and I filled it with dope-sounding sequences so I started using it live for a while. I would just sync the sequencer to my clock on Ableton Live but the little guy kept slipping out of tune halfway through my sets, so I gave it the boot. I still use it in the studio like crazy though.

3. Oberheim Matrix 6
It’s hard to find an affordable polyphonic analog synth that doesn’t sound like piss. This one is awesome, though! It’s great for Depeche Mode-style chords and really thick leads. It has MIDI, too, and you can adjust any parameter on it to get super-weird sounds. I made “Opening Ceremony” when I first got it. I was just playing one of the presets with mad reverb on it and I had to start recording it.

4. Doepfer A-100 Modular
My pal John Hughes (a.k.a. Slicker, and head of Hefty Records) got me into this modular shit. I really don’t know what I’m doing with this thing, but it’s super-fun and I used it on damn near every track on the album. The cool thing about building a modular system is that you can do it one piece at a time, and in the process you learn so much about how a synthesizer works. My favorite module so far is the Plan B Model 15 oscillator. I have two of them. The bass sounds retarded (check “Baby Tank” or the end of “The Area”) and the FM modulation will make a typical patch sound insane!

5. Korg MS-20
This was the first real synth I ever bought. It’s probably my favorite keyboard ever. The filter on it sounds cooler than any other filter ever! I play this a lot on all my albums. I used it for the bassline and the high-pitch lead on “See What It’s About.” I got a custom case for mine and I tour with it sometimes, but it’s getting pretty scary now that they are worth like $2000 or something.