Angine de Poitrine (Photo by Constantin Monfilliette)
50. The Rolling Stones
From: London, UK
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Because every 20 years they make a record worth hearing, even though every single track on Foreign Tongues is too long. It reimagines Amy Winehouse “Miss You”-style, that’s good for something, right? And if “Mr. Charm” reimagines “Star Star” as “Star Star,” well, better that than “Angie,” no?
What Have They Done for You Lately: Not only does “Hit Me in the Head” have “one of these days gonna fall down dead / it will go a lot quicker if you hit me in the head” and rhyme “puke” with “abuse,” it has Charlie Watts.
49. Butthole Surfers
From: San Antonio, TX
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Because a quarter-century after their last LP, the Cronenbergs of rock have finally released the proper follow-up to their mutant radio hit “Pepper” and it’s the avant-sellout bricolage “Pepper” deserved to be on, a Check Your Head from dudes who really need their heads checked.
What Have They Done for You Lately: After the Astronaut is like an evil Cornershop album, a traffic jam of trip-hop and White Zombie riffs that’s dated in all the most mesmerizing ways; “Imbuya” emerges from a time capsule where the Prodigy were still storming MTV, while “Junkie Jenny in Gaytown” is a ballsy stab at a bhangra chant.
48. Stuck
(Photo by Vanessa Valadez)
From: Chicago, IL
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: “Today’s solutions are tomorrow’s problems” is the understandable credo of what’s sure to be a whole generation of alt-rockers naming their releases things like Do Not Reply and Content That Makes You Feel Good and Stuck will still be better and tighter at it than most. From its whirring dial-up synths to post-punk hooks where you least expect them, this year’s Optimizer wasn’t being completely sarcastic about its ambitions.
What Have They Done for You Lately: The wound-up Les Savy Fav successor “Net Negative” and the freakshow riff in its knotted chorus are net positives.
47. Team Dresch
(Photo by JJ Gonson)
From: Olympia, WA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Because these “queercore” punk legends came away from a spirited anniversary tour playing their only two albums in full every night (the raw Personal Best and the great Captain My Captain) wanting to make a third and now they’ve done just that 30 years after changing the lives of countless riot grrrls, LGBTQ youths, and allies with good ears.
What Have They Done for You Lately: The upcoming Furthermore updates 1995’s still-too-valid “Hate the Christian Right!” with the equally angry “Growing Underground,” some more melodic moves reminiscent of Kaia Wilson and Melissa York’s tenure in the Butchies (“And Now Your Face”), and both of the drummers they’ve ever had, a move that remarkably, they’re not the only reunited band on this list to think up.
46. Scarab
From: Philadelphia, PA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Stereogum’s Best Hardcore Album of 2025, Burn After Listening was eight songs in 13 minutes typified by and peaking with “Ugly.” “Feed pure violence into your heart,” Tom Breihan beckons; I agree, reminds me of Slipknot’s Iowa except the hour-plus Iowa keeps on stabbing long after you’ve bled out. This doesn’t (complimentary).
What Have They Done for You Lately: “Ten Foot Shadow,” which sounds like being thrown from a rollercoaster and ends before you splat the ground.
45. WU LYF
From: Manchester, UK
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: “Love don’t have to be so hard,” rasp the soulful wannabe enigmas slash reluctant arena theoreticals too warm to disappear or even obscure themselves forever. To sweeten the deal, the more tuneful and legible of their two albums in 14 years is the one not recorded in a church. Far be it from me to argue they should have spent that sabbatical doing something other than being a fool for love while the world burned for a significant portion of it. But the grandiosity of their sound, hearts, and track lengths suggests the long-awaited A Wave That Will Never Break may have gotten its own Wikipedia page if they had anything new to say about their subject.
What Have They Done for You Lately: I’ll settle for 11 minutes of “Tib St. Tabernacle” half-appropriating Geese: “these hard times call for furious dancing.”
44. Goetia
(Photo by Travis Stone)
From: Washington D.C.
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Not to be confused with the Memphis thrash band (thanks Encyclopaedia Metallum!), there’s nothing wrong with a little death metal from D.C. to subsidize being governed by a death cult from D.C. And after a few EPs, they finally managed to cull together 32 minutes of speed-horror debut full-length, entitled (close enough) Mortuary Cult.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Harmonized a few queasy guitar solos and unleashed a little necksnapper called “Posthumous Execution” that could pass for hardcore. Though I don’t know why they called a track “Excarnation” when “defleshing” is way more death metal.
43. Man/Woman/Chainsaw
(Photo by Emma Swann)
From: London, UK
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Two decades ago, you couldn’t throw a pint glass without hitting a band like this — especially in Canada but we’ve also learned not to count out Los Campesinos! — with six members on multiple instruments (most strikingly violin) and sharing multiple vocal duties. Their pile of press includes references to post-punk and Black Country, New Road but long-anticipated full-length debut Cannonball is much more polished and disciplined, even if it vacillates from a country opener (“Only Girl”) to a tango (“Flick of the Wrist”) to a witchy waltz with a title you wouldn’t expect (“Get Up and Dance”).
What Have They Done for You Lately: The gradual fist-pumping swell of “Nosedive” is destined to follow big-tent indie standards like “You! Me! Dancing!” and “Wake Up” to encores in sizable venues.
42. Um, Jennifer?
(Photo by Eva Smittles)
From: Brooklyn, NY
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Fig Regan and Eli Scarpati have been cursed with catchy toons since at least last year’s Um Comma Jennifer Question Mark, which strung together winsome bits with the amateurish charm required to put across titles like “Girl Class” and “Old Grimes.” This year’s five-song Dirty Twice EP rocks harder, polishes shinier, and skronks with the atonal shrapnel required to put across a title like “Bushwick Ratbag.”
What Have They Done for You Lately: The sticky impostor syndrome battle royale “Jodie Comer” lingers in the mind like ghost pepper on the tastebuds.
41. Dry Cleaning
(Photo by Max Miechowski)
From: South London, UK
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: I lumped DC into what I call talkwave even though this South London quartet towered over art-rock contemporaries like Squid and Black MIDI and fellow chatterboxes Black Country, New Road and Yard Act. Florence Shaw still talks even if there’s not much of a wave anymore; even Yard Act has upped the singing these days. And Tom Dowse is still a more inventive and recognizable guitarist than their obvious precedent Life Without Buildings had on hand.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Secret Love is Shaw’s quietest album and Dowse’s catchiest. Admittedly, the latter’s become so potent at his hook riffs/loops/repetitions that it now tends to drown out the former. But the overall effect is you won’t care because the strange juxtaposition always sounds good.
40. Parts & Labor
From: Brooklyn, NY
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: One of the most underrated bands from Brooklyn’s Pitchfork/Vice indie-cultural peak era 20 years ago combined BJ Warshaw and Dan Friel’s jailbroken-circuit electronics with roaring anthemic choruses and the frantic drumming of great music journalist Christopher Weingarten, who was replaced by the more tempered Joe Wong after his departure. They decided if they’re gonna come back it’s got to be big: a double album, epic song lengths (including “Endless Cycle,” a four-part, collectively 20-minute first single), and both drummers.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Set of All Sets is propulsive enough to support its ambitious architecture, especially on “Haunted Limbs,” which would make a hell of a renewal anthem a new generation of democratic socialists: “that work is long.” It ought to hold fans for another 15 years at least.
39. Telehealth
(Photo by Mikayala Neves)
From: Seattle, WA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Because the most withering band name in years belongs to the Devo derivatives of the quiet-quitting era you’d hope, monotoning about being a “glow-up survivor” in the “clean coal dust bowl” (and don’t forget “flora, fauna, Dolce Gabbana” or “calling the cops / artisanal hops”).
What Have They Done for You Lately: This year’s Green World Image is so on-the-nose it’s a zit, but that doesn’t mean you’re too good for “Kokomo 2” (“Aruba, Jamaica / they’re tracking your data”) or “Things I’ve Killed” (“no kings just queens / gimme that guillotine”).
38. Imperial Triumphant
From: New York, NY
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Only in the bizarro world of “blackened death metal” does wacko post-Mike Pattonness beat the meat-and-potatoes grind of, oh, Sanguisugabogg (always wanted to type that). So this nutjob trio, who has (separately) covered “Night in Tunisia” and teamed up with Kenny G, evokes the pre-Patton Dillinger Escape Plan on 2025’s Goldstar locked in battle with Sun Ra Arkestra, twisting eventfully in the nick of time to come out the other side jamming on history’s first great metal riff.
What Have They Done for You Lately: No, not Sabbath — “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).”
37. Imperial Teen
From: San Francisco, CA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Imperial Teen’s previous album way back in 2019 may have nailed them with “We Do What We Do Best,” but the forthcoming All Over You is this fantastic foursome’s meatiest work since the unassailable four-album run that took them from 1996 to 2007 by exploiting Velvets-style two-chord minimalism in the service of power-pop bubblegum and gradually piling on the synths. “We’re so alive in overdrive,” the current single correctly predicts.
What Have They Done for You Lately: All Over You has more out-and-out (and out-and-proud) anthems than any IT since The Hair, The TV, The Baby and the Band, but the best of the best is “Kiss It Goodbye,” which ascends to the heavens in metronomic, multitracked lockstep that could reverberate across arenas if they didn’t prefer dives.
36. The Mountain Goats
From: Durham, NC
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: With John Darnielle you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. His poet-laureate rep precedes a National Book Award nomination and several boomboxes worth of sui generis singer-songwriting that eventually lured Jon Wurster out of Superchunk, and even his most gnomic works (last year’s Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan, say) have pleasures for those of us who don’t hang on his every word. But they’re not always great and when they’re great they don’t always rock, so the surprisingly grunge-themed new Days, which has its share of both, is his most patently crowd-pleasing since 2022’s action-packed Bleed Out, down to its stunt promo for “Candlebox” by opening a few dates for the ‘90s also-rans.
What Have They Done for You Lately: The Afropop-like swooning bass that anchors “Best Hard Rock Albums 2013” and “Going to Fennario” back-to-back is merely the tip of the iceberg as regards two gorgeous new standards in a rich and vast oeuvre.
35. CS Cleaners
From: Brooklyn, NY
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: For three or four songs their debut What’s This? couldn’t make me happier: twin-guitar tonal fuckery, gulping Richard Hell adenoid upfront, “Rot Collector” applying the pull-off precision from New York Dolls’ “Babylon” to Parquet Courts’ motorik morse codes. Thought CS could be shorthand for “from CBGB to Sunbathing Animal” before the second half spaced out.
What Have They Done for You Lately: The miraculous, hiccupping single “Come & Go” comes on like the Hives’ unapologetic bravado applied to Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlaine’s dueling-lightsaber lead constructions: “come out on top / while you’re kicking rocks.”
34. Sugar
From: Athens, GA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Because Bob Mould’s second band was every bit as excellent as Hüsker Dü on their two-and-a-half albums in two-and-a-half years: Copper Blue, Beaster, and File Under: Easy Listening. What they couldn’t replicate in fury they made up for with his stepped-up tunesmithing (Grant Hart wrote the Dü anthems you sang along with) and, finally, the sky-swallowing production Mould’s guitar always deserved. For the first time in three decades they’re touring, off of hopefully more than just three good new standalone singles.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Say this: if “Long Live Love,” “Keep Looping,” and especially thunderous throwback “House of Dead Memories” were noise-pop as surging and spectacular as “Your Favorite Thing” or “Tilted,” they’d be at the top of this list.
33. Westside Cowboy
(Photo by Emma Swann)
From: Manchester, UK
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Their jangling, jittery collective pulse reminds me of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever if a little more demure and rife with harmonic guitar tricks that grew up on Isaac Brock. So if any of that turns your head you’ll fancy a bite.
What Have They Done for You Lately: For an unremarkable title like It Goes On, Westside Cowboy’s debut is more than self-assured, especially in its rhythmic propulsion, but also with the melodies intensified on top, especially “Worried Age,” a tumbling and accelerating duet between Reuben Haycocks and Aoife Anson-O’Connell that sounds like the first of many encore staples they have in them. And the irresistible simplicity of “Pin Up Boys” proves they can do it scrappy, too.
32. Girl Scout
(Photo by Lamia Karic)
From: Stockholm, Sweden
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Ordinary Swedish alt-rockers with a confident hit ratio peaking with 2024’s rapid-fire “I Just Needed You to Know” and its better-than-ordinary parent EP Headache finally unveiled Brink, a debut album that plays more like a sophomore one. Strong but not stronger, ever so slightly more sophisticated in its structures, arrangements, and production, they pile on the reverb masquerading as heft that they temporarily nail down with songs as good as “Uh-Huh” and “Operator.”
What Have They Done for You Lately: “Same Kids” is the new-wavey bid for a hit single that will endure long after the promotion budget’s depleted.
31. Militarie Gun
From: Los Angeles, CA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: While it bloats inadvisably towards the end and fumbled the opportunity to be titled God Owes Me Money, Turnstile’s chief rivals in the hardcore-to-arena-rock pipeline avoided the sophomore slump with God Save the Gun and its myriad highs from the big speller “B A D I D E A” to the warping chugger “Maybe I’ll Burn My Life Down” to the unconventional Blink-182 shoutalong “Throw Me Away.”
What Have They Done for You Lately: The loop-heavy trip-hop hesher “Kick” sums up their world-fucked ethos: “if I kicked you in the face, I’m sorry / But I would do it again.” I’d love to hear Elton John remix that one.
30. Pony
From: Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Throughout the 2020s, Sam Bielanski and Matty Morand have been challenging Charly Bliss’ throne for live-action-Josie-and-the-Pussycats-core supremacy on three airtight albums now but the new Clearly Cursed finally emerges the victor.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Come to think of it, they’re also coming for Bully and vintage that dog. on the honey-dripping crunchfest “Every Little Crumb.”
29. The Paranoid Style
From: Washington D.C.
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: I almost need them to make a bad album because I’m tired of writing the same things, but Elizabeth Nelson’s just not cut out for it. That spiel again: witty rock critic cum hyper-referential bandleader with turnt-up guitarist hubby continue to turn legends into peers by gigging with the Hold Steady, duetting with the Wrens’ Charles Bissell, and employing ex-dB Peter Holsapple. This year’s Known Associates once again ODs on Live Stiffs musically and lyrically offers up wink-nudge delights for a demographic best described as “excited for a song entitled ‘Elegant Bachelors’.” Now with 38% more sax!
What Have They Done for You Lately: Lodged “White Wine Whatever” (and all attendant musings about “a U.S. Open of Klonopin in hell”) firmly into your skull, which is saying something on an album that also includes “A Barrier to Entry” and “Shut Up and Deal.”
28. Heavens to Betsy
(Photo by Chloe Aftel)
From: Olympia, WA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: For the first time in over 30 years, Corin Tucker’s first band is touring, and they’ve unearthed a whole album’s worth of uncollected and sometimes unreleased recordings to follow up 1994’s great Calculated with Baby’s Gone in October.
What Have They Done for You Lately: If the classic, previously demo-only “My Secret” and the never-before-heard “Ain’t Never Goin’ Back” are any indication, there could be another Sleater-Kinney-grade batch of revelations in Tucker and Tracy Sawyer’s backlog.
27. The Cucumbers
From: Hoboken, NJ
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Life partners Deena Shoshkes and Jon Fried declined to go full-time when they were Run-D.M.C.’s labelmates in the ‘80s, but they did consecrate “My Boyfriend,” a classic so indelible it enjoyed some MTV rotation. It’s becoming an event again whenever they make music for fun, as on 2023’s impressive Old Shoes and this year’s dynamite As You Heard Me, which a subtitle notes is the soundtrack to Fried’s short story “Hello George.” For once a concept album is reverse-engineered songs-first, doubly an advantage because they’re wonderful without any need to be much else.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Shoshkes’ “There’s a Crop Circle on My Daddy’s Land” gets fictionalized as a charting country hit because it’s totally plausible, though the sly “Delete” could be on its tail.
26. Lime Garden
From: Guildford and Brighton, UK
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: On Lime Garden’s surefooted sophomore outing, Maybe Not Tonight, Chloe Howard combines the droll quaver of 2014 Kae Tempest with the pained sustain of Standard Fare’s Emma Kupa, but if that’s too obscure for you, try Lola Young fronting Wet Leg. A good, promising record from an upper-percentile occupant of future indie landfill lists, especially on the funky “Cross My Heart,” the poppy “Undressed,” and one of the absolute best songs of the year, which no one seems to have pushed as a single…
What Have They Done for You Lately: In the tradition of “Dancing on My Own” and “Tonight I’m Getting Over You,” Howard’s amazing “Always Talking About You” tries to manifest an almost entirely quotable version of herself: “I wanna be an asshole and I still wanna win,” “I want everyone to say that’s that bitch,” “and I want to make all the businessmen hard.” But she can’t do any of that if she’s always talking about you, stupid!!
25. Nuclear Tomb
From: Baltimore, MD
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: This “weirdo thrash” outfit from B-More cites both crust punk and Rush, plus “psychedelic violence” and apparently a different kind of “skronk rock” than, say, James Chance. But if they’re progressive anything on 2026’s Epoch Inhumane, they keep almost every track around three minutes and the twists and turns aren’t overly technical, mostly just there to thwart rampant ADHD. They strike with more venom and internal wiring than Blood Incantation and I don’t think you’ll have to worry about hearing Rush.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Sequencing “Terminally Emboldened” and “The Coward’s Curse” right next to each other; after all, aren’t those two sides of the same coin?
24. Body Type
(Photo by Jack Saltmiras)
From: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: This quartet’s 2023 breakthrough Expired Candy is the one to beat, but no one is weaving more thoughtful and unexpected time-release guitar hooks into otherwise foursquare rock that would make the Coathangers proud. The new Tally is admittedly slower and subtler, but so’s their very best tune, “Tread Overhead,” meaning let them cook.
What Have They Done for You Lately: If Tally’s closing diptych of “Do You Want to Cry Your Eyes Out?” and “Everything All in a Row” is too lovely for you, try the unsteady riffs of its title vamp.
23. Gogol Bordello
(Photo by James Todd Miller)
From: All over tbh
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: The best live act on Earth never gets the chance to be exhausting when they only rattle off two fistfuls of anthems every 3-5 years, and their voracity for new sounds to subsume is second only to their momentous momentum. So the synths and circular New Order melodies on their first album since 2022’s Putin-infuriated Solidaritine mesh refreshingly with Gogol’s natural wedding-band pulse, and the title We Mean It, Man! might as well be referring to recruiting Bernard Sumner as a duet partner.
What Have They Done for You Lately: You heard me, synths and circular New Order melodies. Of course you’re curious; proceed directly to “Ignition.”
22. Mekons
From: Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Because these uncompromised leftist cowpunks are perhaps the greatest of the still-at-it bands, currently touring Horror, their best album since, well, their best album, 2002’s OOOH! (Out of Our Heads). It’s probably not a coincidence that these freedom fighters conjure their strongest and most furious material during a “War Economy,” which in keeping with the theme of Horror includes “The Western Design,” “Private Defense Contractor,” and who could forget “Sad and Sad and Sad?” See them before the world ends.
What Have They Done for You Lately: I nominate Horror’s rousing “You’re Not Singing Anymore” to join the ranks of “Last Dance,” “Ghosts of American Astronauts,” and “Millionaire,” as in “I love a millionaire,” which they now perform as “I hate a billionaire.”
21. Eddy Current Suppression Ring
(Photo by Chris Middlebrook)
From: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: These minimalist Melbourne stumblebums reemerged from the garage for just the second time in 16 years for the only acceptable reason: they discovered new riffs and wanted to show us. And more than ever, the delight on In Light of Recent Events is in the winging-it, banana-peel sound of them, like it’s always a pleasant surprise or gasp of relief when they accidentally slip and land on the right note. But the drunken tension building up to that cannot be taught.
What Have They Done for You Lately: The rushed, early-R.E.M. jangle of “My World” comes with a perfectly Buzzcockian refrain (“what I’d give for another day with you / what I’d give for another lay with you”), though “Bop” is a bop.
20. Cold Court
(Photos by Claude J. Easy)
From: Philadelphia, PA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Over seven painstaking Ableton frankensteins on their debut EP \ (^_^) /, the best-produced new DIY rockers since you can remember remix themselves into a screeching, Skrillex-style oblivion without breaking the mold of ordinary songwriting, or perhaps that’s the very reason the material leaves so much room for tech-scrambling? Either way, “Nina” is the best early Arctic Monkeys tune in two decades.
What Have They Done for You Lately: “Backslang” is a ten-car pileup of addictive dentist-drill sonics that pounds and swaggers like the Big Pink’s “Velvet” fed through a digital meat grinder.
19. Ratboys
(Photo by Bobby Nicholas III)
From: Chicago, IL
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: After the Beths decided Straight Line Was a Lie, they vacated their seats as the premier normies of choice so these slick and tuneful pros could move in, already poised when 2023’s “The Window” elevated them with, among other things, a pandemic tearjerker about Julia Steiner’s dying grandmother. “What’s it gonna take to open up?” she sings at the outset of Singin’ to an Empty Chair, the best-reviewed rock album of 2026.
What Have They Done for You Lately: I’ve been slow to embrace them (I did say normies) but Steiner is a lovely melodist and her guitarist partner (just like the Beths!) Dave Sagan does have a style of his own, evinced by the bouncy countrified leads on highlights like “Open Up” and “Penny in the Lake.” God I wish they’d bang out more fizzy three-minute rockers like “Anywhere,” though.
18. Downtown Boys
From: Providence, RI
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Victoria Ruiz is mad as hell — and she should be after her forced resignation as an NYC public defender due to Zionist bullshit — and she channeled it into Public Luxury, Downtown Boys’ first album in nearly a decade, which also happens to be her band’s best ever. From turns dancy (“You’re a Ghost”) to crunchy (“Sirena”), they let in hooks from their signature horns (“The City Begins”) to bright neon synths (“Mi Concha”) without compromising on the leftism you’d expect from bilingual punks who titled their last two albums Cost of Living and Full Communism. Considering the cost of living these days, they might just sell you on full communism.
What Have They Done for You Lately: “Where you thought the city would end, the city begins,” they exclaim on their hungriest rocker, but the gorgeous “Yellow Sun” may be even more vital. Best to split the difference with “Albuterol,” which straddles the best of their many worlds.
17. BIG | Brave
From: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Ninth album In Grief or in Hope is what you wish Low sounded like and what you wish doom metal sounded like in one convenient stop, with the added bonus of opener “What May Be the Kindest Way to Leave” being what you wish the last Fever Ray sounded like.
What Have They Done for You Lately: The Antarctic swell-sculpting of “An Uttering of Antipathy” proves definitively that two wrongs make a right.
16. Total Wife
(Photo by Sean Booz)
From: Nashville, TN
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: It’s surprising, and foolhardy, how few bands of the current-wave (and biggest) shoegaze invasion take their cues from Kevin Shields. Maybe they think they’ve got their own juice, ha. This Nashville duo doesn’t fix what isn’t broken, and they ramp up the drill ‘n’ bass Shields was starting to adopt himself on m b v. Turns out you can get pretty far on those alone.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Two-thirds of 2025’s Come Back Down was sonically startling enough to quell the wait for a fourth My Bloody Valentine album (right on schedule in 2035) by a cigarette or three.
15. Robber Robber
(Photo by Jackie Freeman)
From: Burlington VT
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: The youth haven’t been this sonic in some time so it’s good to hear breakcore jousting with Water From Your Eyes-style murmurings and Serena Maneesh-style texturings on Robber Robber’s funhouse sophomore effort Two Wheels Move the Soul.
What Have They Done for You Lately: “The Sound It Made” is as exciting as indie-rock has been in some time, a clamor of blown-out “Crown on the Ground” sirens and Crystal Method breakbeats designed to bash in your skull so candy falls out.
14. Agriculture
(Photo by Steve Gerrard)
From: Los Angeles, CA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: The Spiritual Sound is the first black metal album to interest me since Deafheaven’s New Bermuda a decade ago, but where Deafheaven took their cues from shoegaze (blackgaze is a term some actually use) and let prettiness fade in and out of the music in waves, Agriculture specialize in on-a-dime surprises like prime System of a Down. One’s called “Dan’s Love Song.”
What Have They Done for You Lately: Bet you a shot of absinthe you can hum along with the chorus of “My Garden” even if barely anyone can shriek the rest.
13. Low Cut Connie
From: Philadelphia, PA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Impressive as Adam Weiner’s current motley crew were on their most primetime-ready albums yet, Private Lives and Art Dealers, the ultra-professional air took some of the grease out of the garage. So this year’s protest-fronted Livin in the USA foregrounds tightness over just ten tracks with their most in-your-face production and best recreation of their one-of-a-kind live shows yet. And their best studio job in years ain’t all serious business, as three different party-rock dazzlers called “Get Down,” “Oh Yeah,” and “Everybody” pound away.
What Have They Done for You Lately: If the spectacular glam-stomp “Can’t Be Wrong” sounds like an actual hit, well, you may have caught it at a Phillies game, or perhaps on Kimmel, yakety-sax break and all.
12. Joyce Manor
(Photo by Dan Monick)
From: Torrance, California
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: One of the most beloved emo bands of the 2010s evaded me as beloved emo bands do until 2022’s 17-minute 40 oz. to Fresno finally made remarkably hooky use of their famous brevity. That set them up for this year’s 19-minute I Used to Go to This Bar, which damn well may be the catchiest album released in a year where Charli swerved slightly art-rock and Olivia moped out with the Cure.
What Have They Done for You Lately: How catchy are we talking? “After All You Put Me Through” finds a new use for the Stones-funk riff from Michael Jackson’s “Black or White,” without resorting to CGI Bubbles.
11. The Hives
(Photo by Chris Searles)
From: Fagersta, Västmanland, Sweden
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: The most physically exciting cartoons to score a hit in the 2000s brandished titles like “Hail Hail Spit n’ Drool” and generally sang, played, and operated like they had C4 strapped to their vests, which also explains why they burned up fast despite collabs with Timbaland and the Neptunes that thought beyond their 15 minutes. Instead, they mounted a more-than-respectable comeback in 2023 doing what they’ve always done and clawed their way back to the top in 2025 with the self-explanatory The Hives Forever Forever the Hives.
What Have They Done for You Lately: From start to finish, The Hives Forever Forever the Hives is a shook-up cyanide soda but the garage quintet’s obsession with outsmarting the enemy takes on new resonance when they deploy their might against the fascist threat on an actual protest like “Legalize Living.”
10. The Messthetics
(Photo by Diona Mavis / Impulse! Records via Universal Music)
From: Washington D.C.
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Fugazi grandfathered the only regional punk scene to garner constant allusions to jazz for its bands’ lopsided structures, unusual chords, and disregard for traditional verses and choruses. Might as well give back, right? So Brendan Canty Joe Lally started a fusion combo even though the former especially still pounds like he’s playing basements, and their two electrifying LPs with sax firebrand James Brandon Lewis aren’t just their best music in years but frequently hookier than, well, Fugazi.
What Have They Done for You Lately: “Clutch” is one of 2026’s most exciting musical moments before it even crunches to a climax, and the most epic performance of Lally and Canty’s careers with just four chords.
9. Worldpeace DMT
(Photo by Thomas Connelly)
From: London, UK
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: With “laptop twee” coming soon to a Discord near you, this arm of it is both arch and generous enough to aim their childlike sopranos at “Big Yellow Taxi,” because they’re more tuneful than Ear and less laptop than Josephine’s Next Million Miles. The duo of Leo Fincham and sometime Femcel Rowan Miles combine freak-folk junk instrumentation with the Magnetic Fields’ adherence to tune. “Artrock” is the one that sounds cheapest, thank god.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Current EP Flowers Powers could be this year’s 1000 gecs if trolling still made sense. It makes even less sense to digitally upgrade Elephant 6 but that’s probably what “Dinosaur Punks” is.
8. Sweet Pill
(Photo by Heriberto Gallegos)
From: Philadelphia, PA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Sure, Zayna Youssef can howl like Hayley Williams, but the real reason her band could become this era’s Paramore is because their interlocking guitars actually braid up into something aesthetically appealing unlike so many of their emo peers. Their second full-length Still There’s a Glow is overflowing with melodic generosity if its attractions are a bit too tangled to call hooks, though the goth-grunge “No Control” is as much of a surprise as any other stray pleasures it lobs your way.
What Have They Done for You Lately: The Pride of Philly give “Sunblind” everything they’ve got at the outset of Still There’s a Glow in under three minutes of hypercharged power-pop decorated with the slippery fretwork of studied emo showoffs.
7. Big Thief
(Photo by Troy Gonzales)
From: Brooklyn, NY
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: They were already in an enviable position on this list for Double Infinity alone, an unlikely combo of their grooviest and prettiest album at once that sounded even better live, especially the title tune and the bass-led “No Fear.” But the sudden announcement that they’re about to unveil Horsepower, a triple album featuring Lucinda Williams and Iris DeMent (and, okay, Gillian Welch) as well as unreleased tunes like “Muscle Memory” that were already unexpected highlights of said tour just reestablishes them as the generational juggernauts they are.
What Have They Done for You Lately: In the meantime, all those percussive and inviting layers of Double Infinity are there for the burrowing, with “All Night All Day” the warmest and fuzziest paean to peen since…the Naysayer’s “Pure Beauty?”
6. Feeble Little Horse
(Photo by Tim McMahan)
From: Pittsburgh, PA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: As sheer sound designers, they’re bold and colorful enough to make the top ten of these annual rankings on the strength of “This Is Real” alone last year. And while I wish they included it on this year’s Bitknot, which would have remained under half an hour even so, Pro-Tooled indie-rock doesn’t come better, tighter, or tidier, a boon when you’re corralling sonics this disparate and digitally dissected. They always provide something to listen to, whether it’s the chopped-up voices at the end of “Doorway” or the pennywhistle that immediately follows on “Poison” or the most refreshing cloud-rap I’ve ever heard on “Upside Down” as a palate cleanser between fuzz-pop and broken toy noises.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Everyone knows pretty ballads are the secret weapon of sound-anarchy outfits, so “Rewind” is the pop jewel Lydia Slocum’s been guarding from normies behind all those crude loops and bursts of unruly distortion.
5. Jeff Evans Porkestra
From: Atlanta, GA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Having won me over fast with ragtag Americana tunelets last year about leaving a trail of puppies everywhere he buries his bone (but not if he don’t bring his baby her “Sunday Beer”), Evans’ swillharmonic doubles down and rocks out on the excellent new full-length Telling the Bees, from the Stonesy tale of driving nine hours for a “Hundred Dollar Ham” to the Stampfel-esque travails of Johnny Ding Dong on “Seven Seas.”
What Have They Done for You Lately: The stark, drumless showstopper “Hard Week for Love” leads right into “Big Enough,” a rocker so mean it’s got modulations straight out of “Trampled Underfoot,” and dares to ask “am I playing big enough?” How about now?
4. Angine de Poitrine
(Photo by Jerome Brunet)
From: Sanguenay, Quebec, Canada
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Because the biggest rock breakthrough of 2026 isn’t just an art-prog duo that smoked Geese on the album charts with not just their new album but their 2024 debut as well, but they’re actually good — listenable, funky, fast, fun. These traits aren’t completely incompatible with prog but they’re rare as a polka-dotted schnoz, and double-threat guitarist-bassist Khn de Poitrine sports that, too. Quite the magic act for viral Québécois sensations who sound like Marc Ribot inhaled a bunch of Pity Stix and forced Tal National and Primus to play dueling microtonal scales to the death.
What Have They Done for You Lately: This year’s Vol. II delivers virtually nothing but what it promises; if you enjoyed 30 seconds of whatever you caught of them on TikTok you’ll enjoy 37 minutes that switches it up only as much as needed to stay groovy, a crucial credo because it’s hardly a core tenet of prog.
3. Sweeping Promises
From: Lawrence, KS
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Married Boston transplants Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug didn’t just warm up Bikini Kill’s audience when I caught them in 2024, they set us aflame. But the lo-fi albums I gleaned weren’t afforded the same widescreen impact until now. Third album’s the charm with You Say I Romanticize, which snarls like Essential Logic or We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It while piling on the harmonies like Holly and the Italians or, why not, Blondie for the perfect smelting of ‘80s postpunk and polished-rock alloy.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Almost anything on the new album packs a spiked punch in both the liquor and brass knuckles senses but the curious title “My Friend’s an Entomologist” barrels down the highway from the opening fuzz bass and jumps like the Speed bus once Mondal’s triple-tracked howl takes the wheel. Easily the catchiest usage of the word “exoskeleton” in the history of music, Mars Volta included.
2. Geese
(Photo by Amanda M. Hatfield)
From: Brooklyn, NY
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: Because like the Clash and Radiohead before them, they’re The Only Band That Matters, and so much more fun than Wilco or the 1975 this time. Not only does the insane description Stones + Radiohead actually defend itself fiercely on a percussion-kooky banger like “Getting Killed,” but what a thing to even be. Cameron Winter, who’s already sold out Carnegie Hall by himself before he can rent a car and just announced a Paul Thomas Anderson-directed document of the experience, expresses his mock-gospel vibrato to awe a generation of stans who fear being cringe more than anything else. He’s got jokes (“Taxes,” “100 Horses”) and he expels pain (“Au Pays Du Cocaine,” “Husbands”) and every single one sounds classic, especially “Cobra,” his biggest Jagger rip of all.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Maybe we will see a more rapturously received rock album in the 2020s than last year’s Getting Killed — Wednesday is due next year and they have a direct line to Weezer’s hookups — but the bar is high for good reason. Even when I was still getting used to them I couldn’t deny the clattering whirlwind force of “Long Island City Here I Come,” thanks to secret weapon Max Bassin swinging at his drumkit like he’s got eight tentacles.
1. Twisted Teens
(Photo courtesy of Ground Control Touring)
From: New Orleans, LA
Why You Should Give a Fuck in 2026: First thought was what a compacy, punchy, catchy little band with relentless energy, and 2014 Parquet Courts came to mind before I even knew they had a second 2026 album in them. But like fellow heavyweights to occupy these upper echelons of their time, they take bigger swings (and in such a short span) than initial impressions imagined. Like Big Thief, they appear to be most empowered at their most ambitious, with a third 2026 album supposedly on the way. They deploy lap steel for twangy hooks like Wednesday if not noise like 2010s Wussy; if anything the one-after-another-after-another energy is closer to Funeral Dress, a pace that Wussy themselves didn’t try to keep up for much longer. Their up-to-date trad suits clever lasciviousness like Low Cut Connie (“I might be your X but I can give you an O / then I might just give you ‘bout three in a row”) as well as observations like “western psychology is colonialism.” So they have the balls of Geese, too. If they somehow manage to pull off three great 2026 albums they could give Karly Hartzman herself a run for her Benadryl.
What Have They Done for You Lately: Choose your own adventure, because Blame the Clown is the undeniable half-hour of power of virtually nothing but hyperactive garage hooks (peaking with “100 Bill Is Gone!” which questions a sex worker’s spending priorities) and Florida Water Blues is equally exquisite for showing what else they can do, including vulnerable.