This weekend brings us one of the biggest sporting events of the year: The World Cup final. The match pits France versus Croatia, and many early prognosticators are giving France a slight edge. If Les Bleus win, French fans will have plenty of reasons to celebrate. July 14 also marks Bastille Day, a national holiday that honors a momentous occasion in the French Revolution. With France on our minds, we turn our focus to some of the country's greatest cultural exports. While we know France gave us the Statue of Liberty, many French musicians have only enjoyed cult status in America. So, whether you're celebrating Bastille Day – a perfect excuse to indulge in some French delights – or the world's most popular sport, here are five of our favorite French artists to help plot a playlist.

Édith Piaf
Pop quiz: Name one Édith Piaf song. Chances are you're thinking of her late-40s cut "La Vie en Rose," which reached the U.S. Top 40 in 1950. Amazingly, the tune was Piaf's only major hit in America. Yet she's long been considered one of France's most widely-known exports as her mix of cabaret cheeriness and soulful vamping leant her international (and pop) appeal. Even when singing in her native tongue, she conveys a level of emotion that needs no translation. While "Les Trois Cloches" brings a wide-angle lens to romance, Piaf lends the cinematic song a sense of intimacy. She's also an artist who crosses borders and genres, getting operatic on songs such as "Si Si Si Si" and lending a Spanish flair to "Jezebel." Theatrical yet fierce, it's no wonder Piaf has been adored by everyone from David Bowie to Linda Ronstadt.

Serge Gainsbourg
Don't let Serge Gainsbourg's dreamy, candlelight-worthy arrangements fool you into thinking much of his fare equates to silly love songs. The breathy, sultry, and feather-light compositions most certainly conjure a late-night mood, but the artist had a reputation for possessing relatively R-rated thoughts. A heavy drinker and smoker, Gainsbourg often came across as a degenerate dilettante. But this French bad boy brought a near-unparalleled level of refinement to debauchery. His signature cut, "Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus," was recorded, in its most recognizable rendition, with his companion Jane Birkin. Whispered, cooed vocals get paired with a playful arrangement in which an almost toy-like keyboard and casual, bass-heavy guitar lighten the heated conversation between the two vocalists (Birkin starred in an erotic film of the same name written and directed by Gainsbourg). While the majority of Gainsbourg's songs boast a calmly strummed guitar, almost all feel as if they were conjured in a smoke-filled room of moral dubiousness.

Air
More modern purveyors of the French pop sound, the production duo of Nicolas Godin and JB Dunckel specialize in low-key electronic-cool and warm melodies while paving the way for digitally tinged rock-pop acts such as Phoenix. While the duo's striking debut, Moon Safari, was released in 1997, the album feels built around vintage and mysterious sounds. Indeed, the ingredients of a standard Air album include 60s soul and breezy folk, with the keys to the band's success relating to a hybrid style that's at once psychedelic, inter-galactic, and romantic. After all, there's a reason "Sexy Boy," with its androgynous vocals and energy-pulsing synths, boasts a reputation as a timeless make-out song. But Air's interests are broad. An album such as Love 2 combines pastel atmospheres with thoughtfully spacious arrangements, and Le Voyage Dans La Lune re-imagines space-age bachelor-pad music.

Françoise Hardy
Read one article about Françoise Hardy or Google her name, and the phrase "French national treasure" will likely appear. Once a contemporary of Gainsbourg – Hardy is not only still alive, but still creating and releasing new music – she became an international sensation in the 60s as an actress, model, and musician. And it's her work as a singer that has left the biggest mark. Hardy's direct, even-handed delivery proves well-suited to songs of melancholy, such as the Gainsbourg-penned "Comment te dire adieu" (It Hurts to Say Goodbye), which features a spritely bossa-nova groove and alternates Hardy's deadpan with a more pensive whisper. Her sensational "Tous les garçons et les filles" establishes her exquisite alto amid a hearty trot and made it clear she was intent on writing her own music. Over the decades, her sound matured, and she began to have more in common with Leonard Cohen than some of her French peers.

Colleen
Colleen (real name: Cécile Schott) has for the past decade remained a heavily underrated talent. A multi-instrumentalist whose digital-heavy sounds feel informed by classical music, she crafts light and airy laptop compositions that would feel right at home in a chamber music hall. Catch up with her work via 2017's A Flame My Love, A Frequency, released for esteemed American independent label Thrill Jockey. Inspired by the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, the album stands as her most serious effort to date. But Colleen isn't out to weigh down the listener. Instead, the record serves as a work of exploration by using ambient and unfamiliar sounds that aim to make sense of a confusing world. A tune such as "Separating," highlighted by breathy French vocals, hypnotizes with its mix of repetitive and fragmented computerized landscapes. Consider her songs miniature mazes, with the artist looking to find a light to guide her to comfort.