LOS ANGELES — Thomas Bangalter, half of the influential French dance-music act Daft Punk, has a house high in the Hollywood Hills here. He and his musical partner, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, divide their time between Los Angeles and Paris, where their families live. But for all their jet-setting, there’s little evidence of rock star flash to be seen (well, apart from the Porsche that Mr. de Homem-Christo has parked in the driveway). Built in the midcentury style called post and beam, the bungalow exudes a subtle retro feel, with white carpeting, a cross section of a tree trunk as a coffee table, and a gravel fireplace in the living room. The swimming pool, a small square of radiant Hockney blue, is visible through the glass walls.

The house’s décor mirrors the retro-modern aesthetic that runs through every stage of Daft Punk’s 20-year career. From its first dance-floor smash, “Da Funk,” in 1996 through the synthetic dazzle of the 2001 album “Discovery” to the 2010 score for the movie “Tron: Legacy,” the duo’s defining balancing act has been breaking new ground while simultaneously invoking earlier golden ages of club music, like disco and 1980s electro-pop.

Daft Punk expanded the audience for dance music alongside late-‘90s peers like the Chemical Brothers, influenced Madonna and Kanye West, and helped shape the visual side of live dance music performance. Its famous robot masks and spectacular pyramid-shaped stage set inspired the high-tech showmanship of younger electronic dance music stars like Skrillex. In the eight years since the duo’s last studio album, “Human After All,” dance music has become big business, while Daft Punk-like sounds have infiltrated Top 40 radio, popping up in songs by artists like Justin Bieber.

But after years on the cutting edge, Daft Punk has reversed course with its new album, “Random Access Memories,” out on Daft Life/Columbia this week. Spurning the digital audio software that empowers the electronic dance music generation, the album is an analog flashback to the era of live musicianship, involving a crack squad of session players, the disco legends Nile Rodgers and Giorgio Moroder, indie rockers like Julian Casablancas and the hip-hop star Pharrell Williams. Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Williams both appear on the album’s first single, “Get Lucky,” an uncanny replication of the sparkling disco-funk of Mr. Rodgers’s band Chic.