Matt Beat of The Beat Goes On, who creates abbreviated but detailed histories of legendary rock bands, looked at the enigmatic duo of Daft Punk. Beat spoke about how Daft Punk started out as a French band called Darlin’, which was named after a Beach Boys song, and then subsequently used a critic’s bad review of them to name their new band.

They named  themselves “Darlin’,” after a Beach Boys song. Darlin’ quickly got noticed by the record  label Duophonic Records, a label owned by the   band Stereolab. Duophonic hooked them up with  some shows and recorded some of their songs. On May 1, 1993, Melody Maker published a  review of two of their songs that referred  to it as “daft punky thrash.”

Beat also talked about Daft Punk’s style, their “costumes”, their recording contracts, their albums, how they broke certain boundaries while bringing electronic music to the forefront, and their eventual breakup.

Always mysterious as human beings, the  world got to know Daft Punk as robots, but boy did those robots seem like human  beings. Don’t get it twisted- the elaborate robot costumes weren’t a gimmick- they gave  Daft Punk the freedom to create whatever the heck they wanted to. Seeing them forced  the listener to separate the artist from the music. Perhaps due to this separation, Daft  Punk was able to push the boundaries of electronic music further than their contemporaries, especially with their live performances. Despite releasing just four studio  albums, Daft Punk helped EDM become mainstream.