Excerpts from: 

A Mexican Rock Primer

Nortec Collective
The skinny: Not a band, per se, but a group of DJs who unite techno and norteño music, earning them spots doing remixes for Beck, bills alongside Beck and Basement Jaxx, and performances in London, Paris and the Kennedy Center. On a personal note, Nortec kicked off a three-band bill with Kinky and Tacuba in 2003 that is still one of my all-time Top three shows.

via [YouTube]

The skinny: I’ve always referred to this band Maldita Vecindad
as our national equivalent of Public Enemy – listening to their debut album was as eye-opening an experience for me as Fear Of A Black Planet, as Maldita took on things from a street-level point of view that was, for a long time, very rare in the Mexican music scene. Since they’ve stopped recording, you could argue that Molotov has inherited the band’s mantle as social commentators.

via [YouTube]

Kinky (pictured above)
The skinny: The Monterey natives have come the closest to crossing over into the U.S. market, as they’ve played the Coachella festival and had their songs featured on American series like Nip/Tuck, Dexter and Gossip Girl. They also had the chutzpah to cover Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio.”

via [YouTube]