Since Kraftwerk began presenting themselves as robots circa 1978, a number of electronic bands have adopted robot or spaceman alter egos.
Compare Kayfabe Music, the Super-Trope.
Examples of artists with robot or spaceman alter egos:
Electronic- Daft Punk: Since 2001, although they claim they were transformed into robots in a Freak Lab Accident on 9/9/1999.
- Their anime movie, Interstella 5555 is about an alien band called the Crescendolls that sing Daft Punk songs. Here a lot of Earth singers like Mozart, Ella Fitzgerald, and Janis Joplin are kidnapped aliens that were brainwashed and disguised to look like humans.
- Gary Numan is known for his robotic, alienated performance, and lyrical themes.
- John Foxx often writes from the perspective of "The Quiet Man", a detached variant of this trope.
- Kraftwerk: Duh. Especially since they use synthetic vocals extensively, any vocals performed by a person try to sound like they're synthetic, and many of their live shows actually do involve robots controlled through midi software to play backup; the four robots have molded replicas of the real men's heads.
- Skrillex had a female alien as his alter ego which he controlled via motion technology on a few tours.
- The French 1970s electronic group Space appeared as astronauts in their music videos.
Rock
- Jimmy the Robot of The Aquabats!, though he's the only robot of the group, the rest being super heroes.
- Canadian band The Cybertronic Spree performs as characters from The Transformers: The Movie, with Hot Rod, Arcee, Unicron, and others. They're always in character in interviews.
- Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, David Bowie and his backing band's alien personas during the 1972 tour for the Ziggy Stardust album.
- Ace Frehley from KISS originated the Spaceman.
- Moog Cookbook: These guys even had names for their alter egos: "Uli Nomi" for Brian Kehew and "Meco Eno" for Roger Manning Jr.
- Mr. Pacman: Defunct-ish video game rocker(s) from Denver.
- The Phenomenauts are an exploratory spaceship crew, with a token robot.
- Planetoid's kayfabe is superficially similar to that of Gwar: They're aliens from the future who found themselves stranded on earth, and who now intend to conquer the planet with The Power of Rock. They actually fit into both the "spaceman" and "robot" categories, since drummer Admiral Time is supposed to be a cybernetic organism as well.
- Rockets.
- Servotron performed as a band of robots, whose music was meant to promote robotic uprisings against humans, as well as to encourage humans to become cyborgs.
- The concept of the Garage Rock band the She-Creatures is that they came from Venus after hearing radio waves of Earth music from the '60s.
- Not an electronic band, but Jason Pierce of Spiritualized goes by his nickname of "J. Spaceman" quite frequently.
- Starset perform wearing illuminated face masks and fake oxygen tanks. This plays into the narrative that intertwines with the band itself, as alluded to in "First Light" from Transmissions, with their background mentioning a transmission sent from 2047 regarding a future where mankind is seemingly on its last legs.
Pop
- Janelle Monáe's alter ego is Cindi Mayweather, the android protagonist of her four-part Metropolis concept album.
- The Space Balloons claim to be lost travelers from the planet Balloonia. The concept is mainly adhered to in performances and the songs themselves, though, not interviews.
- Tupper Ware Remix Party consists of an alien spaceman from the Big Bang as frontman and keytarist, a gold-plated spaceman lead guitarist, a Panthera Awesome alien bassist, and a Killer Robot drummer.
- The Animated Music Video for Starlight Brigade reimagines the band as the titular space heroes.
Metal
- Gloryhammer are a Heavy Mithril band with fantasy alter egos in their first album "Tales from the Kingdom of Fife". Their second album "Space 1992: Rise of the Chaos Wizards" is the first Recycled In Space with the protagonist being Prince Angus' descendant trying to save the galaxy.
- GWAR has a long backstory about them being aliens banished to Earth, and like Lordi are never seen out of costume.
- The Protomen: Sometimes taken more seriously than others.
- Stovokor is a death metal band consisting entirely of Klingons.
Rap
- Before Eminem figured out his image for his Slim Shady character, he gave him an alien theme, appearing in a distorted, psychedelic spacesuit in the music video for "Just Don't Give A Fuck" (and pushing himself around in a shopping cart). It didn't work - Eminem eventually realised all he needed to do was bleach his hair.
Folk/Steampunk
- Future Folk are General Trius and The Mighty Kevin, who were originally sent to earth from the planet Hondo to kill off all human life and start a new settlement there. Fortunately, they soon became fascinated with the human invention known as music, and decided to spare humanity and focus on performing original folk songs. Their back-story was made into the movie The History of Future Folk: In the film, audiences think they're a comedy duo with spaceman alter egos, when in fact they actually are from outer space.
- The Mechanisms perform as a group of immortal Space Pirates, and the stores of their albums are presented as things they've seen while wandering the cosmos.
- The members of Steam Powered Giraffe perform as a group of automatons built in the Victorian era, complete with elaborate metallic stage makeup. Even their merch sellers have their own personas in the form of "Blue Matter Engineers," which they dress up as for shows.
