Bishop Allen is a rock band halfway composed of Justin Rice (vocals) and Christian Rudder (guitar), apparently good friends and sometime roommates of Jed McCaleb, the man responsible for the EDonkey 2000 and Overnet P2P file-sharing networks/servers/clients. For a good long while, the default startup screen of both ED2K and Overnet contained a plug for Bishop Allen. That's how I discovered them - they released mp3s of their songs "Little Black Ache" and "Things Are What You Make Of Them." The other half of Bishop Allen is made of Jack Woodhull on the drums and bassist Christian Owens (Owens is the female Christian, Rudder is the male Christian).
That said, Rice and Rudder named the band after the street they lived on - Bishop Allen Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Earlier, they had a stint as "The Pissed-Officers," whose main trick was playing 17 songs in 7 minutes. Forming Bishop Allen, they recorded the album Charm School and met with unexpected success. Granted, we're talking indie success - 7,000 albums in 6 months ain't no Thriller. Charm School was released in May of 2003.
Aside from many other laudatory quotes - Charm School got very good reviews - on their website, they got on NPR's Weekend Edition, which was very helpful to them. As of this writing, they are still "officially" indie - they don't even have a label. However, they are still not as indie as MC Frontalot.
Sources: Overnet and www.bishopallen.com | 
