Best New Wave

I'm sorry dear lady but with the exception of Ric Ocasek's group, this is not new wave... Duran Duran,and Depeche Mode are 80's Brit-pop bands (the former awful and the latter quite good) who were strongly influenced by New Wave but in reality they (and John Hughes) killed (American) New Wave by bringing it out of the college rock frat house basements and into the arenas. Hell, why not nominate Loverboy? Or Modern English?

New Order is Post-punk (like fellow Manchester-ites The Fall) while New Wave was never post-punk, it existed as if the only punk that ever occurred was The Ramones.

The Cars are New Wave - its funny that in your little poll, they are dead last.

I submit that there were two different kinds of New Wave - American (synths, pop) and English (guitars, rock/ska/reggae), the latter was really more (mainstream) rock than punk/Ramones influenced.

Here's my Top 4 New Wave (American) bands:

Suicide
Josie Cotton
The B-52s
Devo

English New Wave:

The Jam
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Graham Parker
The Pretenders (yes, I know they're American)