HUMAN AFTER ALL

Daft Punk Breaks Up After 28 Years

The electronic duo has not released an album since 2013—and now they’ve announced their split with an eight-minute video.

Daft Punk, the highly influential Parisian electronic duo founded by Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter in 1993, has split. The group has posted an eight-minute farewell video on its website; a publicist has confirmed the breakup to Pitchfork, but did not provide a reason for the band’s decision. The footage used in the video, titled “Epilogue,” comes from the band’s 2006 film Electroma, in which one of the pair’s robot characters activates the “self destruct” function on the other’s back, prompting him to explode. Robot hands appear on the screen afterward, with the dates 1993 to 2021.

Homework, Daft Punk’s first album released in 1997, received positive reviews and contained singles including “Around the World,” but the band’s second album, Discovery—which included hit singles “One More Time” and “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”—would prove more influential, reshaping dance music for a digital age. The pair won their first Grammy in 2007 when the live album, Live 2007, won Best Dance/Electronic Album. They went on to win five more—including Album of the Year for 2013’s Random Access Memories, which featured the inescapable single and impossibly catchy “Get Lucky.”