The 50 Best Rock Bands Right Now (#50-26)
Only #25-1 was above us
Spiritual Cramp (Photo by Carlos Gonzalez)
Done these before, but always happy to explain. What does “right now” mean? Or “best?” Or even “rock?” That last one’s easy — with little exception these are classic guitar/bass/drum formations in the interest of celebrating great music that’s long past being the dominant popular force in it. No solo artists, sorry. “Best” and “Right now” kinda converge here; these are all bands who contributed something meaningful in or around 2024, whether it’s a great new album, a newsworthy return, a surprisingly long tail of significance from their last release, a stage-smoking live show, a pivot to something newer and more interesting, an unprecedented influence over other artists, or simply being the best their style currently has to offer.
It was brutally difficult to narrow these down to 50 and there are more than 20 others waiting in the wings who wouldn’t have weakened this list if they were subbed in. Hopefully they’ll be shoo-ins next year. These are RIOTRIOT’s choices for the most groundbreaking, vital, kickass music you will find played on loud guitars in 2024.
50. Amyl and the Sniffers
(Photo by Jamie Wdziekonski)
From: Melbourne, Australia
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Their punk template predates hardcore or Warped Tour, which explains the loads of guitar solos, and the violent onstage aerobics of frontbrat Amy “I Don’t Like My Own Choices” Taylor pick up where 2003 Karen O left off. If you thought “Pin” and “Tick” were addictive cheap thrills, go ahead and snort the riffs from “Security” and “Hertz.” Nothing they’ve yet unleashed from October’s forthcoming Cartoon Darkness sounds like it required three years to simmer, and good. Those’ll be even better live.
What Have They Done for You Lately: “Facts” may be the only song from 2024 that conjures “Sonic Reducer,” and it may boast the better opening lines: “I was born, fist in my mouth / Then spent my whole life gagging it out.”
49. X
From: Los Angeles, CA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: All four original members of an essential punk band — and certainly the best band ever to be even lightly associated with the suffix “-abilly” — lived long enough to reunite for one more worthy of their classic status (2020’s Alphabetland) 35 years past their heyday and 2024’s ain’t-bad-getting-better Smoke & Fiction before embarking on their final tour ever.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Fiction opener “Ruby Church” does their legacy plenty proud; no one else has ever harmonized like Exene Cervenka and John Doe.
48. Los Campesinos!
From: Cardiff, Wales, U.K.
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Tweexcore upstarts turned emo lifers whose leader learning to sing is kind of a mixed bag, it’s true I preferred this youthful seven-piece 15 years ago — with more gender parity in their gang vocals and more glockenspiel doubling their guitar hooks. Their comeback is nevertheless one of the feel-good stories of 2024. After a seven-year absence, LC! performed a DIY miracle getting the self-released All Hell all the way to number 14 on the UK charts (their first time ever even in the Top 40) without hiring any publicists or promo, all while turning their coin-op guillotine on the bootlickers. They still sound like no one else and vice versa; if I was an emo fan surely they’d be closer to the top of this list.
What Have They Done for You Lately: All Hell is still plenty of fun, their best and most distinct album since the late 2000s, and the Pleased to Meet Me-charged “Moonstruck” is its most carefree ripper.
47. The HIRS Collective
From: Philadelphia, PA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Either 2023’s excellent We’re Still Here levels up big time from JP and Esem’s last full-length or my ears have adjusted better to grindcore during a pandemic that required an increased dose of cathartic heaviness. My guess is a little of both. The trans-radical-collectivist spirit helps, too; I wouldn’t say dozens of guests as disparate as Shirley Manson, Soul Glo, and Screaming Females sweeten their respective pit-killers but 20+ people shrieking (or occasionally rapping) at you is objectively more fun than one.
What Have They Done for You Lately: It’s not like you’ll be able to pick the 83-second “Trust the Process” out of We’re Still Here’s entire blur, but that lead riff around 0:23 is gloriously upside-down and backwards.
46. Drug Church
(Photo by Ryan Scott Graham)
From: Albany, NY
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Yet another batch of hardcore-turned-alt-rockers, except unlike Militarie Gun or Turnstile, you won’t hear Mellotron or detours into samba. Patrick Kindlon bellows meat-and-meat rock with an astonishing success rate for anthemic choruses given how little maneuvering room they grant themselves. Then again, why not stick to only what you do best?
What Have They Done for You Lately: In October, you’ll get to hear the monstrous (if not Monster-quaffing) Prude in all 30 minutes of its shouted/melodic, better-than-Quicksand-ever-was glory. But for now you can chew on “Chow,” and its two bricks to the face you’d call chords.
45. Bar Italia
(Photo by Steve Gullick)
From: London, U.K.
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Their two(!) 2023 albums are honorably different. First we got Tracey Denim, which wove together Nina Cristante and Sam Fenton’s chalky voices over close-miked drums in a manner that recalled trip-hop, Hail to the Thief, and Black Box Recorder more than anything else. Or maybe the xx before they got festival money. By contrast, unexpected follow-up The Twits cranked the guitar a bit.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Bar Italia’s best song is still “Nurse!” which gets surprisingly crazy with the Cheez Whiz on its backing funk and makes negative space as hooky as Missy Elliott did.
44. Ekko Astral
(Photo by John Lee)
From: Washington, D.C.
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Not a noise act, but they bury the tunes enough to fool you, and there’s a ton of wordplay down there, too. Wondering aloud how Bon Iver’s pronounced (they don’t care) or why trans friends still have to hide while you throw a parade (they care), Ekko Astral’s debut album Pink Balloons is a mess you won’t want to clean up.
What Have They Done for You Lately: You wouldn’t expect a song called “uwu type beat” to challenge the back half of In Utero for voltage and fury, would you?
43. Drop Nineteens
(Photo by Larissa Doronina)
From: Boston, MA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: With TikTok sorting the marketplace, we’re getting rabidly-anticipated reunions for shoegaze-adjacent American acts that ‘90s kids (ok, me) have never heard of. So check back to 1992’s Delaware and you’ll find tiny 120 Minutes hit “Winona” kinda charming and 2023’s Hard Light even better. Unlike similarly ether-plucked flukes Duster, these guys-and-gal didn’t fit the hazy norm because they paid their dues writing songs instead of swapping cred.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Luna literally featured the Chills’ bassist and the Feelies’ propulsive drummer, so why didn’t they ever make anything that sounded like “Tarantula?”
42. Spiritual Cramp
From: San Francisco, CA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: The hardcore boom of 2020’s answer to the rock-is-back boom of 2000 thankfully takes after the Hives rather than the Strokes, and while no one can match Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist’s high-wire freneticity, you have to give it up to anyone who cares to cover “Walk Idiot Walk.” Their clean-cut guitar slash finds the median between Rocket From the Crypt and Bloc Party, and the highlight of their eponymous debut even pulls from the Attractions circa Armed Forces. Don’t get tighter than that, really.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Dangerously catchy one-off “Nah, That Ain’t It” shouldn’t have been omitted from Spiritual Cramp unless they were afraid it would upstage the rest.
41. Tyvek
From: Detroit, MI
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Parkay Quarts get too heady for you after Tally All the Things That You Broke, much less Danger Mouse? On 2023’s Overground, Tyvek’s got you covered on baked-in garage rock with local legend Fred Thomas on drums and, crucially, Emily Roll on Ubu-style sax-skronk after a seven-year hiatus.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Getting more talky and splattery on “What It’s For,” they match previous career high “Wayne County Roads” despite being less anthemic; it’s a hoot.
40. Sumac
From: Vancouver, B.C./Vashon, WA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Doom simply isn’t my thing, so these Isis/Botch/Baptists holdovers must be doing something else, right? Wikipedia says “post-metal” but they feel too musically organized on 2024’s arresting The Healer to be post-anything. Composed or at least planned out, the dynamics crunch like bone and shift like the brakes are cut. Nick Yacyshyn is one of those eight-armed beasts you hear about in math-metal, and if you can stomach 12-to-25-minute jams, he’s given just the right amount of space to attack without making you wait for the others to blast in.
What Have They Done for You Lately: “New Rites” has it all, from a thundering intro beat you could rap over to some solo star-spangled banner shit at the end.
39. Ratboys
(Photo by Alexa Viscius)
From: Chicago, IL
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Like the Beths, all these Chicagoans really have to offer up in tribute to the indie-rock gods are thoughtfully penned and beautifully sung tunes with scant window dressing. That doesn’t preclude them from crafting them into fun shapes, though: the slow-rolling “Black Earth, WI” is the exact midpoint between Beck’s “Golden Age” and P-Funk’s “Can You Get to That.” The Window and its heartbreaking title track made for some breakthrough last year, and I bet they’re just getting started.
What Have They Done for You Lately: I live for moments like the pretty guitar lead-in on “It’s Alive” that snaps like a slingshot directly into that hiccuping chorus.
38. Wet Leg
(Photo by Hollie Fernando)
From: Isle of Wight, U.K.
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers have updated NME-style hypeomania worth of the Libertines or Lily Allen for the viral age, so the wry-dry, Mean Girls-referencing “Chaise Longue” netted them various anarchronistic plaudits including one alt-rock Grammy of three. The Libertines and Lily Allen were also pretty great, so it wasn’t that big a surprise when 2022’s Wet Leg delivered on the promise of the singles, either. Who knows when they’ll follow it up [bottomface emoji] but covering Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit,” Charli XCX’s “360,” and Ashnikko’s “Daisy” in the meantime can’t be bad for their songwriting muscles. Or getting Harry Styles rocking “Wet Dream” in turn.
What Have They Done for You Lately: I swear Wet Leg is a whole party between the singles, too, but you’re not gonna do better than “Ur Mom” with Teasdale’s “loudest and longest scream” in place of a middle eight.
37. Feeble Little Horse
(Photo by Meg Fair)
From: Pittsburgh, PA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: There are a lot of bands who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing and even more who don’t care. Very few of them matter, and even fewer write lyrics as funny and lifelike as Lydia Slocum’s: “You fuck like you’re eating,” “How can you be satisfied when she’s 5’1 and you’re 6’5?” As for the sound, it’s noisy, it’s jagged, one of their best riffs was inspired by Mdou Moctar (“Sweet”) and you’ll faintly register the ghost of a breakbeat elsewhere. Plenty of DIY showgoers get bummed when these types eventually figure themselves out, but Feeble Little Horse is only getting better.
What Have They Done for You Lately: “Tricks” is just no-bullshit pretty, like Frankie Cosmos with the safety off.
36. Couch Slut
From: Brooklyn NY
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: As you figured out from the name, the words being expelled from Megan Osztrosits’ mouth like poisoned vomit are ones worth actually comprehending, whether they’re a beatdown threat transmitted directly from LensCrafters or a bloody telling of what occurred after she was “fired from the haunted waterpark.” Her band’s molten noise-sewage contains just the right amount of atonal logic in its sulphuric spew to always keep them upright too.
What Have They Done for You Lately: “I loved those dumb miniature scalpels,” Osztrosits reminisces in the unusually straightforward rocker “Wilkinson’s Sword” and just be glad the music obfuscates the rest. Except for her blood-curdling scream, of course.
35. DIIV
(Photo by Shervin Lainez)
From: Brooklyn, NY
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: This year’s Frog in Boiling Water is a best-case scenario for both the allure of the shoegaze trend and onetime BNM also-rans. Zachary Cole Smith initially garnered attention for jangling parallel to chillwave alongside the sweeter Beach Fossils and the blander Real Estate (and dating Sky Ferreira, with whom he was infamously drug-busted). After making somewhat of an art of repeating himself with 2016’s obsessive Is the Is Are, I stopped feeling the need to pay attention, and eight years later comes Smith’s most rewarding album, now paced slowly enough to chew on its unexpected chord sequences and add some heft to the borrowed Silverchair that lifts it above mere prettiness.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Frog’s “Brown Paper Bag” is the pot of grunge at the end of the rainbow.
34. Gel
From: New Jersey
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: With Sami Kaiser’s deepened groan, a fistful of ugly block chords, and a signature toggle between grunge and d-beat tempos, these reliable Jersey crowdkillers keep it as elemental as quasi-hardcore gets, telling Invisible Oranges, “We won’t want to overthink. All of the classic punk and hardcore songs are two riffs. We try to live by that same logic. Simplicity is powerful.”
What Have They Done for You Lately: This year’s “Martyr” would’ve already been a highlight on L7’s Smell the Magic, then it doubles its bpm.
33. Yard Act
From: Leeds, U.K.
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: The least artsy of the U.K. talkwave bands, including my beloved Dry Cleaning. I’d peg them somewhere between Cake and Art Brut (and perhaps Kae Tempest?) on the archometer, though they’re more consistent: The Overload and Where’s My Utopia? make two for two intermittently danceable (“we ain’t afraid to get paid on stage”) albums that split the difference between gratitude for their unlikely success and rueing the capitalist hellhole they’d be in without it.
What Have They Done for You Lately: “We Make Hits” might tell it, but the mirrorball special “Dream Job” shows it. (“All night long!”)
32. Snõõper
(Photo by Pooneh Ghana)
From: Nashville, TN
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: I might be a loser but I’m somehow still not online enough to know what makes these kids “egg punk.” They sound like classic carbon monoxide to me. I just know they’re a riot who gets bored of their own songs before I do and shuts them down before you can decide whether they’re annoying or hysterical. Last year’s Super Snõõper might be the silliest thing Jack White’s released since, well, something of his.
What Have They Done for You Lately: “Fitness” is virtually a call-response between its dum-dum dumdum melody and those guitar squeals going off like crossette fireworks.
31. Vampire Weekend
(Photo by Michael Schmelling)
From: New York, NY
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Because the Only Band That Matters™ (2008-2013) is Still Good even if they’re on borrowed time past their Sandinista! and lost their proverbial Mick Jones (the indispensable Rostam Batmanglij) after they made their last inarguable masterpiece. The arguable ones, including the new Only God Was Above Us, are awfully striking, though. And we still haven’t met a smarter frontman (I said man) in the intervening decade.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Fuck all that aside for a second, though, because “Pravda” — which knows its Tabu Ley Rochereau — shows us we haven’t met a smarter guitarist either.
30. Be Your Own Pet
(Photo by Kirsten Barnett)
From: Nashville, TN
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Despite being my favorite band of the 2000s, when they were unstoppable hellions who turned every venue into a teenage riot, and reforming with a very good, hilariously titled new album in 2023 (Mommy) on Jack White’s currently absurdly kickass Third Man roster, BYOP have garnered depressingly little attention for reuniting after a 15-year absence. Pitchfork declined to review Mommy, and the fiery Underground Arts show I caught last year was offensively underattended. Jemina Pearl is still one of rock’s all-time frontpeople, Jonas Stein one of the most unsung guitarists, and they may be out of step forever. But I hope they stick around this time regardless; we need them more than they need us.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Mommy has plenty of raucous familiar punk, but I love the glam new tricks on the AC/DC-channeling monster “Pleasure Seeker,” which sums up their lifelong m.o.: “We’re pleasure seekers baby, we don’t care!”
29. Filth Is Eternal
(Photo by Joshua Simons)
From: Seattle, WA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Some bands on this list have a 60/40 ratio of punk to metal but the outfit formerly known as Fucked and Bound split fairly even down the middle; they’re just as likely to evoke Gel or early Turnstile as they are doom or thrash. They’re also fucking catchy — just try giving yourself a “Roll Critical”-ectomy once that chorus lays eggs in you.
What Have They Done for You Lately: The 91-second “Crawl Space” might be the juiciest amuse bouche that any heavy genre has offered up in the last 12 months.
28. Wimps
From: Seattle, WA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: “I haven’t washed my hair in a week / Every time I try to run I start to pee,” grouses Rachel Ratner, so just because her trio Wimps aren’t young doesn’t mean they don’t value time — yours and theirs. They’re garage lemmings with tambourines and bass solos in tow when something’s gotta change, but they’re not compromising on a fourth chord. For a decade-plus they’ve had the Northwest razor-thin song-punk down to a science. On 2023’s City Lights, their first offering in half a decade, they return to the basement as masters of all that they explode.
What Have They Done for You Lately: “I wanna be an animal,” sings Ratner on every chorus of “Animal,” and earns the title after each refrain: with the best guitar lick of her career.
27. Still House Plants
From: Glasgow/South London, U.K.
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: Genuinely difficult music that genuinely pays off even for those of us who kind of fear the limited visions of various experimental scenes, this trio is worth gritting your teeth for. What do they sound like? Two very different artists warming up in the same practice room: a post-rock rhythm section tuning up while Jess Hickie-Kallenbach improvises R&B vocal runs. On every track. Sounds horrible, right? When your brain relaxes enough to let it work, it’s like finally seeing the hidden picture in the Magic Eye.
What Have They Done for You Lately: I was finally convinced when they hit the key modulation in “More Boy.” Two wrongs sound so right.
26. Mannequin Pussy
(Photo by CJ Harvey)
From: Philadelphia, PA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2024: This flagship Philly punk band does whatever the fuck they want by now. Olivia Rodrigo-inspired punk ragers. Buffy-inspired pop numbers. A tantrum called “Ok? Ok! Ok? Ok!” In 2019, their breakthrough record Patience sounded a little produced, but that only made the anthems shinier and the hardcore songs more of a sneak attack. I Got Heaven is no less inchoate and just as gripping.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Honestly, good luck getting the lightly-brushed ballad “I Don’t Know You” out of your brain at the strangest times.
To be continued in Part II.