Pixies - Velouria

The Pixies are definitely

one of the all-time great rock bands, and have released some incredible albums, such as Doolittle and this one, Bossanova. While they are considered an "alt" rock band, they definitely were much more than that, and were doing things that were completely unique compared to their contemporaries. They incorporate a lot of different sort of rock elements, like punk, surf, rockabilly, and even metal ideas and harmonies. Their singer, (Frank) Black Francis, is truly an incredibly songwriter. He doesn't do anything super "shreddy" or complex, rather just coming up with really incredible chord progressions and melodies. Often using just simple barchords, he wrote stuff that is SUPER interesting music theory wise, using all kinds of modal substitutions, odd-meters, with an awesome use of dynamics throughout the songs.

Listen to Velouria by Pixies here.

As previously mentioned, this track

is from their 1990 album Bossanova. This album seems to me to be the point when they became really confident in their songwriting, because every song on this album has something amazingly interesting about. This song uses a relatively simple progression for the main riff, F to F#, the Bb to B, but the rhythm guitar moves up to the F# and B before the rest of the powerchord, so you get these tritones and major 7ths happening, which give it a much more interesting feel. The verses feels like we resolve to a Bb minor, but that winds up being the minor 4 in F#, which is a simple but awesome choice.