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- William Onyeabor is a famous quirky Nigerian musician. His origin is incredibly mysterious, but in 1978, he financed his own music studio, and bought a number of then cutting-edge synthesizers (which were prohibitively expensive in the 70s, especially in Nigeria). His music consisted of extended jams that blended African percussion, western funk and warbling synths, all with simple lyrics that alternate Silly Love Songs and political commentary. His 6 albums became great successes in Nigeria, and later had became a huge influence on artists like LCD Soundsystem. In 1984, he became a born-again christian and was seldom heard from again, never rereleasing his music until the Luaka Bop label managed to track him down in 2015.
- Pato Fu alternates between regular if a bit quirky pop rock and outright exotic things, such as "Made In Japan"
(lyrics in Gratuitous Japanese, outside from the chorus borrowing from "Mahna Mahna"), songs with titles such as "Uh Uh Uh, Lá Lá Lá, Ié Ié", and albums\concerts performed on toy instruments, along with toys themselves. - Psychostick is a WHAT mixed with Lyrical Dissonance. For example, one of their most popular songs is explaining how a song is not a song, but a sandwich, set to hard rock. Another is a borderline screamo talking about tacos and how awesome they are. It does not make sense in context either.
- Clevelanders The Electric Eels would wear biker jackets adorned with safety pins and swastika badges just to provoke their audiences' disgust. For added confusion, they would double-bill with The Styrenes, who were often accompanied by several dancers.
- Suicide were formed by an organist and a performance artist in 1970 as a kind of free jazz outfit, and were probably the first band to self-identify as "punk". The New York duo's music was so weird and abrasive that no studio would touch them until 1977.
- Frank Zappa possesses a Genre-Busting sound combining rock, jazz, classical, blues and god knows what else, with music that has lots and lots and lots of Epic Rocking steeped in extreme instrumental proficiency and Uncommon Time, wacky, satirical lyrics about things ranging from the counterculture to being infected with gonorrhea, and rock operas where the main protagonist develops a sexual attraction to kitchen appliances are just a few of the things he brings to the table.
- Zappa's contemporary and frequent collaborator Captain Beefheart is another prime example of a WHAT. Albums like Trout Mask Replica must be heard to be believed.
- There is also the American experimental hip hop trio Death Grips. Abrasive electronic beats that border on Sensory Abuse overlaid with an extremely angry man aggressively rapping lyrics that range between being terrifyingly Ax-Crazy and just plain weird are just the beginning of their strangeness. They are also known for their public antics, which include cancelling shows (and later, breaking up completely) out of the blue to suddenly dropping albums for free online and making the cover a photo of an erect penis.
- Marilyn Manson took the "shock rock" aesthetic of Alice Cooper and really ran with it to the point of entering unquestionable weirdness, between the crossdressing, makeup, androgyny and abundance of surreal imagery (at times twisting familiar subjects, as the video for "The Fight Song" features a game of American football in the rain between goths and jocks), plus criticizing American culture with what usually enters Word Salad Lyrics ("All simple monkeys with alien babies\Amphetamines for boys, crucifixes for ladies").
- Dog Police was three Memphis musicians with quite the musical chops, getting together to do weird comedy music. If their eponymous song (and music video!) isn't enough, there's "1-800" (highlighted in one special by the above mentioned Weird Al) and quirky tracks about butch women, middle class, burgers, etc., none sounding similar to each other.
- Country Music in general is often seen as a WHAT outside the US, and until The '90s was seen as this within the US, specifically as a Weird Humorous Southern Thing. Most Americans' exposure to it was in the soundtracks for Westerns (hence the now-outdated name "country and western") and a few novelty hits, and beyond that its popular image was of songs about farming, hunting, and women who kill their husbands told through a specifically Southern lens. Since its mainstream explosion in the '90s these stereotypes have mostly died out, though some country singers do still embrace them in a tongue-in-cheek manner. That said, the stereotype has evolved: country still prides itself on its Eagleland image, with common subject matter now including off-roading in big trucks, dinner at Kitschy Themed Restaurants, reverence for the military, and tons of hyper-specific local references.
- Visual Kei, an entire musical movement where Genre Mashup is cranked up and musicians dress up in highly extravagant costumes that cause much Viewer Gender Confusion.
- Yet another shining gem from Japan is Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's PONPONPON song; complete with ducks, eyeballs, bread, dancing pink lunchladies with raspberries for heads, and pterodactyls that circle the Tokyo tower. And that's not even covering the weird parts.
- Boredoms. Two drum kits, a carnival organ and a swinging worklight, what can go wrong?
- Denpa song is essentially an entire style of music made to be as annoying yet catchy as possible often with over the top Moe vocals and themes. Madness mantras, wotagei chanting, and intentionally off-key singing are commonly found in songs labelled denpa.
- Plus-Tech Squeeze Box. Their first album is pretty standard Shibuya-Kei fare, but their cartoon-themed second album, Cartooom! is when things get weird. With album art resembling The Fairly OddParents! or Dexter's Laboratory, barely comprehensible English lyrics, gratuitous use of stock cartoon sound effects, and song titles like Uncle Chicken's Drag Rag, it's about as widget as it gets.
- BABYMETAL is the result of combining teenage girls singing Japanese idol pop music with heavy metal of all things. And making it actually sound good.
- LADYBABY is a similar take to BABYMETAL, but includes a crossplaying male member doing the metal vocals.
- Necronomidol are a darker spin on Babymetal, being idols whose influences include Black Metal, H. P. Lovecraft and occultism.
- FAR EAST MENTIONS MANNEQUINS, or FEMM for short, are a pop duo that have been gaining some attention for combining Americanized musical stylings (complete with English lyrics) and a concept only the Japanese could come up with: two animated mannequins released by a secret organization for the purpose of seeking out other mannequins with the potential for sentience, ultimately aiming for liberation from humans and world domination. Their most popular video on YouTube, the bluntly titled "Fxxk Boyz Get Money", features the two mannequins clad in Elegant Gothic Lolita twerking robotically to a continuous stream of profanity.
- Brand-new idol Society, better know simply as BiS, were a short-lived idol group whose raison d'etre was to twist idol culture beyond recognition with bizarre and horrific imagery, overt sexuality, and live shows that more closely resembled hardcore concerts than idol concerts. Musically, well, that they released a collaboration with Harsh Noise legends Hijokaidan should tell you all you need to know. They're meant to be weird even in Japan, but that they exist as a parody of uniquely-Japanese idol culture without rejecting it completely will probably make them extra weird to non-Japanese.
- Sigh are a Black Metal band, which already makes them Widget enough, but they compound this with, ever since Infidel Art, composing their songs with the specific (self-admitted) intention of fucking with your head. Any given Sigh song is bound to have influences from a wide number of disparate genres, from classical to disco to dub reggae to jazz. And that's just on one album (Imaginary Sonicscape). Albums where this tendency is especially pronounced include Hail Horror Hail, Scenario IV: Dread Dreams, Imaginary Sonicscape, In Somniphobia, and Graveward, but it really applies to all of them except maybe the début.
- Merzbow, a pioneering Harsh Noise artist who takes Sensory Abuse, Hell Is That Noise, and incomprehensible art to levels you probably never thought possible.
- Band-Maid, an all-girl metal band that is often compared to BABYMETAL. They dress in Meido outfits and preform high speed dual-shred heavy metal music.
- MaximumTheHormone is firmly a metal band, but what specific TYPE of metal constantly shifts throughout each of their songs. And that's not getting into their lyrics, which are weird even if you speak Japanese.
- King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are an Australian Psychedelic Rock band who churn out albums like breeding rabbits, pepper their material with microtones to such an extent that they use custom instruments for it, and write musically complex environmentalist songs that range in tone from languid and atmospheric to eardrum-shattering death metal. Consequently, a major part of their public image and audience appeal is just how out there they are, even when compared to other psychedelic and Progressive Rock bands.
- Finntroll is primarily a cross between humppa (a Finnish variety of polka) and black and death metal, who sing songs in Swedish about how much fun it is to be a troll, smash villages and terrorize Swedes. They also have a fondness for dressing in steampunk troll outfits and for instruments like the kazoo and the banjo.
- Magma, with its militaristic nonsense chants, bizarre polyrhythms, and vaguely Hubbard-esque philosophical underpinnings, is one of the most notorious examples of musical WTF. Have a listen.
- New German Hardness (Neue Deutsche Härte) is a genre that really could have only come out of Germany, and not just because of the name. It was spawned from what was once East Germany, which had extremely strict laws that heavily cracked down on western music, because it's the Soviet Union, so duh. Because of this, only the biggest acts over here would ever get any sort of popularity there, and even then, it wasn't to the same level as America. Because of this, the music evolved differently, and the culture around it also evolved differently. New German Wave (Neue Deutsche Welle), which proceeded New German Hardness, was a major influence on the later genre, and was a German evolution of new wave music. This, combined with metal influences, lead to Oomph! and Rammstein establishing the foundations of the genre, which can best be described as "really damn German". A more mechanical sound, with loud, clear, deep vocals, with uncomplicated music and more usage of keyboards and synthesisers than in your average metal genre help define it. Complexity is valued in most metal genres, but not here.
- Neo-Medieval music is another uniquely German thing. While it's caught on elsewhere, neo-Medieval bands are usually found in Germany. The name really says what it's all about, but for the uninitiated, it's sort of like Nordic folk metal's German cousin. All the typical instruments can be found: different types of bagpipe and drum, as well as various different types of pipes, flutes and string instruments. However, it's also a little less common to find modern instruments like (electric) guitars. Because of this, it's quite a broad spectrum; there are bands that pretty much just play straightforward medieval music, but there's also bands who sound closer to Medieval metal and could probably even be classified as some form of folk metal. The reason for its inception can probably be traced to the popularity of Medieval markets and historical re-enactment in Germany; indeed, quite a few of the bands in the genre started out performing at Medieval markets, and still do so today.
- Kraftwerk originally started out as just another Krautrock group before turning into one of the pioneers of electronic music, however quite a bit of their discography is comprised of songs about otherwise boring subjects such as using calculators ("Pocket Calculator"), how radio transmissions work ("Antenna"), train travel ("Trans-Europe Express"), calling somebody on the phone ("The Telephone Call"), and driving on the highway ("Autobahn").
- The Fox by two Norwegian talk show hosts is one of these. The song consists of a man wondering how foxes communicates - as apparently it's a complete mystery to the human species - followed by a chorus of frantic "fox noises" (gibberish). The music video consists of people in animal costumes dancing in the woods. It manages to be hilarious and horrific at the same time.
- The whole Black Metal genre counts as a Norwegian version of this, with its unconventional song structures, strange melodies, and often corpse paint-faced musicians. Immortal is perhaps the most widget example in the genre, due to their not-so-serious music videos and narmy song lyrics. (It should be noted that not all black metal bands are Norwegian; the Trope Maker is usually either considered to be Sweden's Bathory or the U.K.'s Venom. There aren't many black metal bands that aren't weird, though.)
- London's Subway Sect looked like a gang of delinquent clerical workers and taped themselves performing Molière plays for kicks. Their lyricist would also intentionally use longer words than were necessary to avoid sounding too "rock".
- The Bonzo Dog Band were a band in the 60s before Monty Python existed, and have been cited as a major influence on Python. (Neil Innes later went on to work with Python, The Rutles and Terry Gilliam, while Vivian Stanshall had a less successful career performing comic monologues that were even weirder.)
- Gorillaz consists of a blue haired, pain killer addicted lead singer with no eyes, a green skinned alcoholic satanist bass player, a young Japanese Tyke Bomb guitarist mailed to them when she was ten, a drummer from Brooklyn with a Demonic Possession issue, and a homicidal cyborg version of the aforementioned guitarist. They have such adventures as trying to blow up 300 ft. elk, fighting off the zombies that reside outside their studio, and escaping deals with the Devil by hiding out on an island made entirely of plastic floating in the ocean. Oh, and they technically don't even exist.
- The Rubberbandits certainly count: two Limerick lads who wear plastic bags over their faces to protect their identity and perform a strange combination of hip-hop, comedy and social commentary (occasionally), all while playing up their image (stupid eejit Limerick lads on yokes) as much as possible. Songs of theirs include "Spastic Hawk" (a children's book about a, well, sp*stic hawk—it's an insult in the UK and ROI), "I want to fight your father" (Exactly What It Says on the Tin), "Dad's best friend" (described as being a song about "the middle-aged man who babysat you once and didn't see anything wrong with letting you stay up to watch Videodrome") , "Double Dropping Yokes with Eamon DeValera" and their most famous song, "Horse Outside", which tells the story of Blindboy's (the two members are Blindboy Boat Club and Mr. Chrome) travails at a wedding trying to attract a bridesmaid, his principal offer being based around him owning a horse, whereas the other three lads have Mitsubishis, Hondas or Subarus. Oh, and This Is Your Premise on Drugs doesn't apply: Blindboy called up a radio station (Newstalk) while claiming to be on "legal yips": at the time, the Irish government had, um, accidentally legalised drugs, they say drug dealers used to sell their songs along with hash, the "yokes" in "Eamon DeValera" are ecstasy (yoke can also be roughly analogous to "thingamabob"), at least two of their earlier songs feature hiding drugs up your behind and one of their vines features a crack pipe. They also released an as Gaeilge version of "I want to fight your father", which not only was a decent translation but also rhymed, which is better than a lot of more "serious" bands can do. Their work is fairly provincial, especially their earlier stuff: decent chunks of it are incomprehensible to anyone with no knowledge of Irish slang, specifically Limerick, combined with a thick accent.
