The Buggles are an English new wave band formed in London in 1977. Their best known line-up was as a duo of singer and bassist Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes, with Bruce Woolley briefly contributing as a member from 1977 to 1979. They are best known for their 1979 debut single, "Video Killed the Radio Star", which topped the UK singles chart and reached number one in 15 other countries, and was also chosen as the song to launch the popular American music-themed television channel MTV in 1981.

They released their debut studio album, The Age of Plastic, on the 10th of January, 1980. On the 7th of September, 1979, "Video Killed the Radio Star" was released, serving as both the lead single of the album and the band's debut single. The modestly successful singles "Living in the Plastic Age", "Clean, Clean", and Elstree" followed. Around this time, the group also produced The Jags' most successful single, "Back of My Hand", and helped with the production of Dan-I's sole hit, "Monkey Chop".

Soon after the album's release, Horn and Downes joined the progressive rock band Yes, recording and releasing Drama (1980) in the process. Following a tour to promote the album, the group disbanded in 1981. That same year, on the 1st of August, the music video for "Video Killed the Radio Star" became the first ever shown on MTV in the United States. They also released their second and final studio album that year, Adventures in Modern Recording. The lack of commercial success with both the album and its singles led to the breakup of the group in 1982.

Since 1998, Horn and Downes have occasionally performed the Buggles' songs. The band had its debut tour in 2023 in a lineup with Horn, but without Downes. Their most recent reunion occurred in 2023, and is currently ongoing as of 2025. In 2017, they planned a musical entitled The Robot Sings, although its fate is unknown. Their work has influenced popular acts such as Justice, Phoenix, and Daft Punk, and has been covered by artists such as Erasure, Robbie Williams, and Ben Folds Five.

Downes claimed the group's name derived as a pun on the rock band The Beatles, saying: "It was originally called the Bugs ... studio insects—imaginary creatures who lived in recording studios creating havoc. Then somebody said as a joke that the Bugs would never be as big as the Beatles. So we changed it to The Buggles." Horn later spoke of its name: "I know the name's awful, but at the time it was the era of the great punk thing. I'd got fed up of producing people who were generally idiots but called themselves all sorts of clever names like the Unwanted, the Unwashed, the Unheard ... when it came to choosing our name I thought I'd pick the most disgusting name possible. In retrospect I have frequently regretted calling myself Buggles, but in those days I never really thought much about packaging or selling myself, all that really concerned me was the record."

Horn began his career producing jingles and punk rock groups. Downes was a keyboardist in She's French and graduated from Leeds College of Music in 1975, after which he moved to London looking for keyboard work. The two first met in 1976 at auditions for Tina Charles' backing band and worked with her producer, Biddu, whose backing tracks had an influence on their early work as the Buggles. Horn met musician Bruce Woolley while playing the bass guitar in the house band at the Hammersmith Odeon. Both expressed an interest in Kraftwerk and Daniel Miller, leading them to read Crash by J. G. Ballard. Said Horn, "We had this idea that at some future point there'd be a record label that didn't really have any artists—just a computer in the basement and some mad Vincent Price-like figure making the records ... One of the groups this computer would make would be the Buggles, which was obviously a corruption of the Beatles, who would just be this inconsequential bunch of people with a hit song that the computer had written ... and would never be seen."

In 1977, Horn, Downes and Woolley got together and began recording a selection of demos in a small room above a stonemason shop in Wimbledon, southwest London, including "Video Killed the Radio Star", "Clean, Clean" and "On TV". Though unsure about what they wished to do with the demos, Downes remembered that "we knew even then ... there was some distant goal that had to be reached", and proceeded to re-record the songs at a 16-track recording studio in north London. Initial searches for the right record label to record and release an album failed, but Horn, having begun a relationship with Jill Sinclair, a co-founder of Sarm East Studios, managed to secure plans for a potential deal. However, the demo version of "Video Killed the Radio Star" caught the attention of producer Chris Blackwell of Island Records and, on the day on which Horn and Downes were due to sign with Sarm East, Blackwell offered them a more lucrative deal, which they accepted. Downes claimed Island rejected them three times before a final deal was agreed upon.

With the Island recording contract having been secured, The Buggles recorded their debut studio album, The Age of Plastic, through 1979. Initially, the demo of "Video Killed the Radio Star" featured vocals by Tina Charles, who also helped fund the project. Although the song was primarily a Woolley composition, he ended his association with Horn and Downes to form the Camera Club before the song's release as a single. Making The Age of Plastic involved several months of tiresome and intense experimentation with studio equipment and techniques, struggling to capture the "magic" of the original demos. Debi Doss and Linda Jardim-Allan, the female voices on "Video Killed the Radio Star", contributed their vocals to other songs on the album as well.