A lot of times when I'm teaching I'll find students having a hard time grasping and/or feeling various rhythms/time feels. It seems odd to me that they're having trouble with rhythms and such that feel natural to me. I then realize why a particular rhythm or time feel does indeed feel so natural to me; it's certainly not because I'm naturally gifted like that, but it almost always goes back to the music that I grew up listening to. When I ask students, "What kind of music do you listen to?", it's almost always straight ahead 4/4 music with very basic rhythms. Now sometimes simplicity is absolutely beautiful, but I believe that we as musicians need to listen to a wide variety of music in order to better understand and appreciate it. (And doing this will also leave us better armed with a large bag of comfortable rhythms & such from which to choose as performers.)

I was fortunate to get turned on to a lot of progressive rock at an early age that was loaded with varied tempos, odd times, weird broken rhythms, etc. As a result, I can refer to any number of songs that contain unusual rhythms, time signitures, etc. that serve as perfect listening examples for my students. So with that said, here is a my list of some of my favorite rock bands/albums that are not only musically great, but also have built in lessons:

(note that these aren't necessarily complete discographys for the bands)