'Teachers,' track nine on their 1997 debut Homework, is a spoken incantation of influences that name-checks Midwest greats like Paul Johnson, DJ Sneak, DJ Rush, Romanthony and DJ Deeon вЂ“ Black and brown artists who didn't have Daft Punk-sized budgets, DJs that may have gotten their flowers in the underground, but are definitely at risk of being forgotten in successive waves of digitalism and cultural Coachella-fication. But when I think of Daft Punk I always think of Chicago house in the '90s, the pair's adulation of which was no secret. It's easy to equate Daft Punk with disco loops вЂ“ like all good crate-diggers, as they aged they leaned heavily into exploring the lineage of where their samples had come from.

NPR Music asked a few experts to consider what the two did for them personally, and what that might mean for the history books. Over the next 10 years вЂ“ most notably with Discovery in 2001, a legacy-cementing tour in 2007 and the mystique-enhancing break they left in-between (not to mention all that came after) вЂ“ Bangalter and Homem-Christo became the steel-and-silicon giants they'd wished themselves into being, while unwittingly setting the stage for a different type of machine altogether.Дaft Punk's music is and always will be formidable, but the roots and future of its legacy aren't yet crystal clear. The pair, born Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, began making music in the early '90s, raving through that effervescent decade and leaving it, with the release of Homework in 1997, in a blissed-neon glow. On Monday, the ur-French-dance-music duo Daft Punk announced вЂ“ via the slick and typically cryptic video above, featuring a dramatic self-destruct sequence вЂ“ that it was hanging up the helmets and leather jackets for good.

Best daft punk songs