Devo, the Talking Heads, and American new wave

At Ru-Jun's dance recital over the weekend, one of the classes danced to Whip It by Devo (in red futuristic dresses).  This is the only Devo song 99% of people know and it's a really good song.  It got me thinking what Devo actually did to music.  Like the Talking Heads, Devo had its roots in the punk movement of the mid-late 70s and many of their songs had rootsy origins (e.g. Working in a Coal Mine) (TH had more funk flavors).  Both of these bands stripped down those sounds and made them abstract, sometimes by adding synthesizers, other times by just going really minimalist.  Then stuff could be added back to expand the possibilities of the abstract essence.  Both bands did it with the rhythm section. TH did it predominantly with rhythm section, reflecting the funk essence, whereas Devo added a lot of synths on top of things (TH was no slouch at this either) and later got into more of the 80s synth pop sound (whereas TH ended up going toward what David Byrne eventually did solo with the Latin influences he got into).  I really like this about these bands' role in new wave: abstracting, finding the essence of the music, and using it to make a completely different, and often completely infectious, sound.