i'm going to have to say Depeche Mode.

I would say Blondie was important because they experimented with different styles of music in their songs like disco on "Heart of Glass", reggae on "The Tide is High" and rap/hip hop on "Rapture"

Well before you can make a choice you have to try and define "new wave" and that is the hard part.

New wave (IMO) goes back a bit further than the 80's, and most of the new wave bands stuck to the basic guitar, bass and drum line up. Electronics were used but sparingly, in other words the use of synth or electric keyboards did not define the sound of a new wave band. New wave was almost a time period more than a sound say like the late 70 to early 80's. The trasnsition/aftermath of disco, punk and arena rock so to speak.
Somehow I don't really feel Depeche Mode really was a new wave band exactly, but I would give a nod to Gary Newman, Devo or Kraftwerk.

If were name new wave bands I'd list the Squeeze, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, The Jam, even the B-52's even deserve a mention.

Can't pick one, but two of the most important new wave bands were The Talking Heads & The Police

DEVO
Depeche Mode and Blondie are good candidates for different reasons.  "New Wave" is such an eclectic category with bands ranging from The Knack to to Talking Heads defined as such.  

I say Devo is most important in the genre.  

Devo was not the first to use any given element, but the first to draw together the elements we associate with New Wave:

The robotic or mechanical sound (preceding: Kraftwerk/succeeding: Depeche Mode)
Deadpan style (preceding: Lou Reed/succeeding: David Byrne, Gary Numan)
Kitsch/Pop Culture send-ups: (preceeding: The Residents/succeeding: The B-52s)
Bleak themes on modern life: (preceeding: The Residents, Cabaret Voltaire/succeeding: Soft Cell, The Fixx)
Futuristic themes: (preceeding: Krafwerk, David Bowie/succeeding: Gary Numan, Depeche Mode)
Space Age image: (preceeding: David Bowie, Hawkwind/succeeding: A Flock of Seagulls)

Devo also shared a particular theme of obtuseness with the Ramones, who are cited as early Punk, but had just as great an influence on New Wave. (think Jocko Homo versus Cretin Hop

The name Devo came from the concept of "de-evolution," which was a response to the Kent State shootings in 1970.  Devo members were art students at Kent State when the shootings occurred and knew two of the students killed.  The 1960s were a flash of idealism and hope being snuffed out. Devo could see this a full decade before the murder of John Lennon and the election of Ronald Reagan.

I loved New Wave because it did not repudiate the ideals of the '60s, it just said the hippies had failed.  Whereas the hippies were back-to-the-land, make-love-not-war, anti-synthetics, anti-technology, anti-commercialism, and anti-suburbia; New Wave reflected a the world of mass-production, technology, Leave it to Beaver, militarism, Madison Avenue, competitiveness, and stress that kept marching in spite of the counterculture's protests.

In fact, what I was seeing in my early teens was the counterculture being co-opted by corporate America: Yippies becoming Wall Street money men, spiritual self-discovery becoming Ayn Randi-ish aggressive "self-empowerment," Gestalt therapy encounter groups becoming corporate personnel management schemes.  I saw hippies becoming yuppies and returning to the materialism of the 1950s, only with classier tastes.  I saw therapy become the new religion.  In short, the was the ME GENERATION.  

That's why satirical New Wave bands, such as Devo and Talking Heads mattered.

new wave:    the cars,  duran duran, inxs,  thompson twins,  missing persons,  ub-40,  talking heads,  devo,  adam and the ants,  modern english,  men at work......... i know theres more, i kinda thought the term "new wave"  meant another wave of british artists!  but it seemed when new wave was big, just as many american artists made great music as well

Devo was not the first to use any given element, but the first to draw together the elements we associate with New Wave:

The robotic or mechanical sound (preceding: Kraftwerk/succeeding: Depeche Mode)
Deadpan style (preceding: Lou Reed/succeeding: David Byrne, Gary Numan)
Kitsch/Pop Culture send-ups: (preceeding: The Residents/succeeding: The B-52s)
Bleak themes on modern life: (preceeding: The Residents, Cabaret Voltaire/succeeding: Soft Cell, The Fixx)
Futuristic themes: (preceeding: Krafwerk, David Bowie/succeeding: Gary Numan, Depeche Mode)
Space Age image: (preceeding: David Bowie, Hawkwind/succeeding: A Flock of Seagulls)

((( *snip* )))

In fact, what I was seeing in my early teens was the counterculture being co-opted by corporate America: Yippies becoming Wall Street money men, spiritual self-discovery becoming Ayn Randi-ish aggressive "self-empowerment," Gestalt therapy encounter groups becoming corporate personnel management schemes.  I saw hippies becoming yuppies and returning to the materialism of the 1950s, only with classier tastes.  I saw therapy become the new religion.  In short, the was the ME GENERATION. 

That's why satirical New Wave bands, such as Devo and Talking Heads mattered.


Seconded with Karma.  Devo for the win.

I went the route of the corporate bastards -- because I was through being cool.  But thanks to Devo, I did so in full knowledge that it was all a crock.  It just happened to be a profitable crock. 

Devo said it was OK to enjoy technology, machinery, and to exploit it for one's own purposes -- but anyone (and there were several reviewers at the time) who thought that Duty Now For The Future was some sort of a clean mechanical ode to fascism (!) had completely missed the point.  Devo was the first to realize that the 60s counterculture didn't sell out to the establishment, but that it had bought in. 

Devo's point was that the future was gonna suck, and the only thing cool about it was that at least it'd be pretty and shiny and clean.  (Or was it the other way around?  That the future was gonna be pretty and shiny and clean... but it was still gonna suck.)  The ambiguity between these two points of view was similar to the ambiguity (in the IT world) between a bug and a feature, and it spoke well to a bunch of early-80s larval-stage hackers fiddling away with soldering irons in their parents' basements. Maybe the sterility of the 80s could be both a bug and a feature.

Around the same time as Devo, came the underrated Telex, who did the same sort of thing as Devo.  Telex was by no means as significant, but they drew their inspiration from the same sources.  If you liked Devo, give some Telex a spin.

Devo on SNL, 30 years ago! This had to be difficult to get your head around in 1978!  :o
http://valleywag.com/345718/devo-on-saturday-night-live-++-30-years-ago