In the 2000s, some of the most interesting underground bands had a simple problem: nobody knew what shelf to put them on.

How Hot Topic became an unlikely discovery and distribution network for underground music in the 2000s, including Tampa electropunk band Retard-O-Bot.

Retard-O-Bot came out of Tampa at the turn of the millennium, when building an audience still meant putting bodies in a van, records in a box and thousands of miles on the odometer. If you wanted people in another city to know your band in the early 2000s, the most reliable method was to go there.