When the 2011 Coachella festival lineup was announced in late January, there was one massive surprise that had music fans buzzing with excitement.

The surprise was not that Kings of Leon, Arcade Fire, Kanye West or The Strokes were the major headliners, or that Duran Duran is still going strong all these years later (their latest album, All You Need Is Now, is a glorious return to form, by the way).

No, the big news was the inclusion of a little band on the list of acts for April 17 — a band that had broken up back in 2006 after an all-too-brief run only to become more popular after disbanding — a band known as Death From Above 1979.

Comprised of Sebastien Grainger and Jesse F. Keeler, Death From Above 1979 is a Toronto-based rock duo that produces a brand of music almost impossible to label. Some call it noise-rock, some dance-punk, but there’s no denying that Death From Above 1979’s unique blend of heavy synthesizer, bass hits and thundering drums is music of one-of-a-kind intensity. They only ever produced one full-length album proper, 2004’s You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine, two EPs, Heads Up and Romantic Rights, and an album of remixes and B-sides, Romance Bloody Romance.

Their 2006 split was a particularly depressing breakup because Grainger and Keeler had barely tapped into their potential as a rock duo and had amassed a small, dedicated fanbase that was pining for what wonders of post-modern rock they had in store for the future. It was also a breakup that “was entirely personal,” according to Grainger in a 2008 interview for Eye Weekly. The bandmates hadn’t written a new song in about a year and were no longer on speaking terms except when concerts and interviews demanded it. On a depressing blog post released to their MySpace fans, Keeler explained that Grainger and he had grown apart over the years, and had become the kind of people who “probably wouldn’t have been friends if they were to meet for the first time again.”

Keeler went on to MSTRKFRT, his electronica group with DFA 1979 producer, Al-P, hitting up the club circuit while Grainger started The Mountains and toured with bands like Metric and Broken Social Scene. In light of the animosity between the two that led to their breakup, the 2011 reunion for Coachella seems even more surprising.

It’s not every day that two people who can’t stand each other decide to give it another go for the sake of their music. That’s not to say that Keeler’s MSTRKRFT is not one of the best electronica bands around and Grainger doesn’t produce intriguing power-pop, but there is no doubt that their best work was done as DFA 1979.

As we await their performance at Coachella on April 17, Grainger and Keeler’s intentions remain unclear. Is this a one-time stint, or have they put aside their personal differences to give it another go as the best rock duo Canada has to offer?

Let’s hope it’s the latter, because a future with Death From Above 1979 in it is a future every music fan should consider a rare blessing. Second chances like this don’t come around often.