The film tells the story of the abduction and rescue of an extraterrestrial pop band and serves as a visual companion to Discovery, Daft Punk's second studio album.

On an alien planet populated by blue-skinned humanoids, keyboardist Octave, guitarist Arpegius, drummer Baryl, and bass player Stella are playing to a packed audience.

[nb 7] Shep flies into a Crescendolls stadium concert with a jet pack and fires a beam at each band member, freeing all of them from the mind control except Stella, who is blocked by Earl de Darkwood.

He attempts to sacrifice Stella to complete the ritual required to unlock the Gold Records' power, but the band manages to defeat his robotic henchman.

[nb 15] At the film's end, it is implied that the whole story was the dream of a young boy who is a Daft Punk fan, inspired by the Discovery album and toys in his room.

The duo had initially conceived of a live-action film featuring themes of overcoming oppression and rebelling against the machinery of life.

[5] After the live-action approach was discarded, several styles of animation were considered before settling on that of Daft Punk's childhood hero, Leiji Matsumoto.

A team consisting of Daft Punk, Hervet, Pedro Winter and Gildas Loaec were introduced to Toei Animation through a connection at Toshiba EMI.

[6] After Matsumoto joined the team as visual supervisor, Shinji Shimizu had been contacted to produce the animation and Kazuhisa Takenouchi to direct.

"[7] Four segments were released to serve as music videos for Discovery's singles, and were shown on Cartoon Network on 31 August 2001 during the "Toonami Midnight Run: Special Edition".

[13][14][15] In June 2024, a 4K "remaster", upscaled with artificial intelligence, was shown at the UGC Normandie in Paris, as well as at Tribeca Festival, marking the film's North American theatrical premiere.

The film was animated digitally in standard definition and was converted between NTSC and PAL encodings during the production process, creating issues in framerate and resolution upon initial release in 2003.

These issues, in addition to the original masters being unrecoverable from Japan, prevented a proper restoration and led to the use of AI upscaling to allow a more presentable theatrical exhibition.

"[25] Mania.com concluded by stating that the film is "a unique feature that shows just how well music can be blended to animation to make a compelling story.