If you start a discussion about great pop artists of the ‘80s, the same names will come up. Michael Jackson. Prince. Madonna. WHAM! (Okay, maybe not WHAM!) One name that will almost always get glossed over is Was (Not Was), the Detroit art-funk combo that scored a pair of left-field hits in the latter part of the decade with “Walk the Dinosaur” and “Spy in the House of Love.”

Surely it must be an oversight. After all, two of the groups core members, Don and David Was (born Don Fagenson and David Weiss), have some of the best production credits in the business. The two of them have worked with luminaries from Dylan to The Stones, from Bonnie Raitt to The B-52’s. But, if you follow the basic narrative of pop music in that decade, it’s just those two slick hits, right?

Wrong, says Pick of the Litter 1980-2010, the band’s new career-spanning compilation. Chronicling everything from their debut single, 1980’s “Wheel Me Out,” to their 2008 comeback LP Boo!, this disc shows that the Was route has a bit of a different bend than one might think.

In early cuts like “Out Come the Freaks” and “Tell Me That I’m Dreaming,” the classic Was (Not Was) formula – David’s loopy keyboard licks, Don’s kinetic basslines and the fine soul vocals of Sweet Pea Atkinson and Sir Harry Bowens – is all there. But there’s an admirable rough edge to it all. There are no samplers and no studio sheen. Even as the band got enough fame and influence to record at top-flight studios, that mentality still sticks around.

And those lyrics. Those qurky lines flowed from the pen of David Was, who could turn out throwaway pop lyrics (“Shake Your Head”), tender ballads (“Should I Wait,” “Somewhere in America There’s a Street Named After My Dad”) and near-insane yarns (“Zaz Turned Blue” and “Evlis’ Rolls Royce,” which feature equally head-scratching cameos by Mel Tormé and Leonard Cohen, respectively) with equal aplomb.

Was diehards (whoever you are, I salute you) have a few nuggets thrown their way too. There’s a dance remix of “Shake Your Head” produced by Steve “Silk” Hurley and featuring vocals from Kim Basinger and Ozzy Osbourne (seriously), a previously unreleased rehearsal version of rollicking album cut “Hello Operator…I Mean Dad…I Mean Police…I Can’t Even Remember Who I Am” and even a track from Sweet Pea Atkinson’s hard-to-find LP, Don’t Walk Away (essentially a Was album in disguise).