Geese—a band of four 23-year-old longtime pals from Brooklyn and Manhattan—represent such an exciting jolt of rock ’n’ roll possibility that they successfully convinced marquee producer Kenny Beats to change his name in order to work with them. When the members of Geese were still in elementary school, Beats was showing up on increasingly big hip-hop records by Smoke DZA, ScHoolboy Q, Freddie Gibbs, and Vince Staples. But as he doggedly pursued Geese through 2024 and convinced them to give his new Los Angeles digs a try, they offered a caveat: He should drop the Beats once and for all and just be Kenny Blume. The swap proved worth it. Together, Geese and Blume made one of this year’s truly great rock records, finding an often-hidden seam between old-school indie-rock idiosyncrasy and the mainstream’s explosive power. *Getting Killed* feels like a burst of new life. Geese signed a pandemic-era deal for their high-school debut, *Projector*, before raising the stakes with their indulgent, discursive, and beguiling *3D Country*. But their flock unexpectedly grew early in 2025, when *Heavy Metal*—the brilliant solo debut of singer and leader Cameron Winter, actually released late in 2024—became an unexpected and uncanny breakthrough. Fans of that album may recognize its tunefulness at the start of Geese’s “Cobra,” where lilting keyboards indeed conjure “Love Takes Miles.” Aside from Winter’s singular voice and barbarically blunt lyrics, though, the similarities stop there: *Getting Killed*is a savage and beautiful thing, anchored by the athletic rhythm section of bassist Dom DiGesu and drummer Max Bassin and given a serrated edge by guitarist Emily Green. Where “Islands of Men” moves from a warped Rolling Stones strut into art-rock transcendence, “Bow Down” is nervous and mean start to finish, Winter howling about lost love over an instrumental that feels like heart palpitations. Hinging around howled lines about bombs in cars, opener “Trinidad” indeed lands like a piece of twisted scrap metal. Geese, though, can be tender and exquisite. “Half Real” is an anthem for holding love close as the world tries to chip away at it, while the climactic soul stunner “Au Pays du Cocaine” is a let’s-stay-together update for our era of shared discontent. Geese have recently flamed the eternal embers of rock-savior dialogues, their imaginative but relentless approach suggesting for many talk about the next Strokes or Radiohead. And, sure, that might happen. But more importantly, Geese have simply done what so many great rock bands in the past have done—they’ve learned the lessons of their forebears, ripped them apart, and reordered them in a way that sounds as thrilling to them as to us. “I’m getting killed by a pretty good life,” Winter warbles on the title track, echoing Neil Young a half-century on. Whether you’re in heaven or hell, it’s hard not to nod at least a little bit of assent to one of rock’s most electrifying new crews and gripping new voices.
Over the past few years, the North Carolina natives have carved out their own distinct (and influential) lane in indie rock: *Twin Plagues*, the band’s 2021 breakthrough, introduced fans to their noisy hybrid of shoegaze and country, while 2023’s *Rat Saw God* helped kick off a new generation’s alt-country revival. Wednesday’s sixth album, *Bleeds*, hones their signature sound—often gnarly, occasionally sublime—with lyrics by bandleader Karly Hartzman that play out like contemporary Southern gothic short stories unfolding inside of dusty dives or along the banks of creeks in her hometown of Greensboro. *Bleeds* arrives in the wake of a pivotal time for the five-piece band (singer/guitarist Hartzman, guitarist MJ Lenderman, lap steel/pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis, bassist/pianist Ethan Baechtold, and drummer Alan Miller): Hartzman wrote much of the album during a grueling world tour, in the midst of which she and Lenderman ended their six-year romantic relationship. But the songs of *Bleeds* are intimate in a different way entirely, built around strikingly detailed anecdotes picked up from conversations with friends or overheard bar wisdom. “Weeds grew into the springs of the trampoline/You saw a pit bull puppy pissing off a balcony,” Hartzman sings on “Wound Up Here by Holdin On,” jointly inspired by a line from a friend’s poem and a story about a body pulled out of a West Virginia creek. A rerecorded version of “Phish Pepsi,” first released on Hartzman and Lenderman’s 2021 collab EP *Guttering*, recounts a weird, stoned teenage memory (“We watched a Phish concert and *Human Centipede*/Two things I now wish I had never seen”). And their small-town transcendentalism is at its best on “Elderberry Wine”—the prettiest they’ve ever sounded, though not without its ennui.
Nation of Language is one of the 2020s’ undeniable indie-rock success stories, as the Brooklyn trio’s strange but delectable alchemy of pulsing electronic pop and the oaky, baroque sounds of late-2000s indie have reached a steadily growing audience with each release. You’ve likely heard “Weak in Your Light” from 2023’s *Strange Disciple* if you’ve turned on a single TV show in the last few years, and their fourth album *Dance Called Memory* continues their hot streak of broadly appealing and emotionally resonant songcraft. With frequent collaborator and LCD Soundsystem live member Nick Millhiser behind the boards, these 10 songs sparkle and bounce with every rhythmic twist, as lead singer Ian Richard Devaney’s angelic vocals hover above the proceedings. And lest you think they’re becoming easy to pin down, *Dance Called Memory* has a few tricks up its sleeve: Witness the brittle backbeats that make up the framework of “In Another Life” or the glistening shoegaze textures that course through “Now That You’re Gone.” It’s these subtle tweaks to their sound that prove that, even as they grow in popularity, Nation of Language continues to evolve in new and surprising ways.
Cate Le Bon’s gently surrealistic art-pop has a way of conjuring scenes that feel both unreachably distant and archetypically close at the same time: a mirrored palace on a rocky outcropping, a cryptic ritual conducted by robed figures on a freezing beach—the kind of stuff you wake up from thinking, “It must mean something,” without quite knowing what. *Michelangelo Dying* forms a kind of triptych with 2019’s *Reward* and 2022’s *Pompeii*, channeling the dreamy stiffness of late-’70s Bowie (“Mothers of Riches,” “Body as a River”) and late-’80s Cocteau Twins (“Jerome”) into a sound that feels totally—and at this point, almost inescapably—her own. And should you wonder if an artist so heady and poised would deign to write a love song, there’s six aching minutes of “Is It Worth It (Happy Birthday)?”
The members of Parcels had barely graduated high school when they left Byron Bay, Australia for Berlin in 2014, five friends sharing a dream and a cramped one-bedroom apartment. Within a year, they had released their debut EP and signed a label deal; by 2017, they were collaborating with Daft Punk on the band’s single “Overnight,” a track that would become the dance icons’ final production. After two albums—2018’s self-titled debut and 2021’s double LP *Day/Night*—and nearly a decade in motion, Parcels finally took a break in 2023. For six months, they lived their ordinary lives while working on songs individually before reconvening to finish them together. Whereas *Day/Night* was recorded in a single studio and meticulously planned out, their third album *LOVED* was made more loosely, with sessions in Berlin, Byron Bay, Sydney, and Mexico City, and a go-with-the-flow approach that let the album emerge on its own. “It\'s kind of like Parcels back to our most authentic self, in a way,” bassist Noah Hill told Apple Music’s Travis Mills in April 2025. “This one feels a lot more pure and direct, and more to what we naturally have inside of us.” From opener “Tobeloved,” *LOVED* is dotted with moments of laughter and colorful ad-libs that drop listeners right in the booth with them. That joy permeates the production, a vintage blend of peppy keys, hand-claps, chest-swelling crescendos, and funky guitar riffs that beg for a little shimmy. They also bring tenderness: “Ifyoucall” offers unconditional love with the warmth of a long hug, and “Leaveyourlove” is a starry-eyed declaration of devotion. The latter, written in Mexico while watching the sun set over the ocean, became the album’s anchor point. “We were all writing our own individual verses about our own love stories at the time, and wanting to lean into that directness and not being afraid to talk about love so directly,” said Hill. “This track just clicked with all of us instantly.” But *LOVED* also refers to the emotion in the past tense. The disco fizz of “Yougotmefeeling” sugarcoats the realization that a relationship is past saving, and the more delicate “Summerinlove” aches with post-breakup yearning. Other songs like “Safeandsound” and “Finallyover” embrace the unknowable future with optimism, while closer “Iwanttobeyourlightagain” circles back to where it all began: “I remember when we were green/Five people and two sets of keys/Trying so hard to be seen.”
Listening to Purity Ring’s panoramic synth-pop has always felt a bit like stepping into a futuristic fantasyland, so it makes perfect sense that Megan James and Corin Roddick would envision their self-titled fourth album as the soundtrack to a *Final Fantasy*-style RPG that exists only in their own minds. But while *purity ring* comes loaded with fleet-footed, breakbeat-driven bops (“many lives,” “between you and shadows”) ideal for whipping through levels at warp speed and slaying enemies with militaristic precision, the album’s more manic tracks flow naturally into meditative soundscapes (“part ii,” “mistral”) that reflect the more exploratory aspects of gaming, where you’re content to just wander through and marvel at the digital vistas around you. And even if you’re not a headset-sporting joystick jockey, there’s no resisting the emotional undertow of “imanocean,” where James turns off the pitch-shifting vocal filters and Roddick eases off the electro-freakery to deliver an acoustic-driven, heart-pumping indie-pop anthem.
The band members of Los Angeles’ Rocket were just youngsters when many of their idols were in the primes of their careers. Even though they weren’t around to witness the glory days of alt-rock, they spent the first years of their career touring with the luminaries that inspired them to start a band in the first place: The Smashing Pumpkins, Ride, Silversun Pickups, and Sunny Day Real Estate. It was those formative touring experiences that helped shape their debut LP, *R is for Rocket*, which marks a significant sharpening of their sound from their first EP, 2023’s *Versions of You*. Produced by the band’s guitarist Desi Scaglione, *R is for Rocket* is crisp and precise, anthemic, punchy guitar rock bolstered by the electrifying vocals of Alithea Tuttle. There’s the propulsive odd-meter rhythm of opener “The Choice,” the Nirvana-esque drum fills and crunching guitars of “Crossing Fingers,” and the Radiohead-inspired balladry of “Number One Fan.” Whoever proclaimed that rock is dead clearly forgot to alert Rocket.
In 2024, Bright Eyes’ inimitable figurehead Conor Oberst lent his distinctively black-and-blue vocals to “The World is Dangerous,” a dusky and ruminative tune from Alynda Segarra’s eighth album as Hurray for the Riff Raff, *The Past is Still Alive*. Clearly, the collab rubbed off on Oberst, whose EP *Kids Table*—a follow-up to 2024’s Bright Eyes album *Five Dice, All Threes*—finds him creatively melding with Segarra directly (the languid, slide guitar-laden, and exquisitely Bright Eyes-y “Dyslexic Palindrome”) while taking a seeming inspiration from their own folk-rock travelogues. With lyrical invectives against hipsters, Ronald Reagan, and various clothing retailers, “1st World Blues” has a first-wave ska feel that makes you think, if only for a second, that Oberst has busted out a porkpie hat and two-tone suit in the studio. Meanwhile, the string-laden opening title track offers a jauntier spin on Bright Eyes’ grandiose 2020s work, showcasing a project that is still constantly evolving even as its leader’s legend continues to grow.
Since their first project as Frost Children (2020’s *Aviation Creates Adventurous Beginnings*), the duo of Angel and Lulu Prost have honed their chaotic maximalism while helping to define what exactly the “indie sleaze revival” means—is the trend a sound or a feeling? If the free-wheeling, red-blooded party-rock anthems of the St. Louis-raised, New York-based duo are any indication, it’s the latter—drawing from hyperpop, indie rock, electroclash, and meme mischief, Frost Children’s music is hard to pin down, but easy to dance to. On *SISTER*, the duo wrings every last drop of pathos from a serotonin-heavy blend of scuzzy bloghouse, mid-aughts dance-punk, and festival-core EDM. The spirit of indie sleaze is alive on “ELECTRIC,” with its buzzsaw synths and Rapture-esque vocals, while Kim Petras collab “RADIO” channels sleazy late-2000s electropop. Setting aside their previous work’s occasional tongue-in-cheek humor, the prevailing mood is earnest: On the title track, stripped-down ’90s rock shimmers with a hyperpop sheen as the siblings recall the dandelions and hand-me-downs of their Midwestern upbringing: “The two of us, driving down a roundabout life again/It’s the two of us/Sister.”
“Hello, stranger,” Neko Case sings off the top of her eighth album, and it’s a welcome reintroduction, given that *Neon Grey Midnight Green* arrives seven years after its predecessor. Case spent a good chunk of her time away writing her best-selling memoir, *The Harder I Fight the More I Love You*, a no-holds-barred account of her hardscrabble upbringing, and in a sense, *Neon Grey Midnight Green* feels like a continuation of that introspective work. As the first entirely self-produced album of her career, it provides an unfiltered glimpse into her musical mind, where she conjures a surrealist swirl of classic-country balladry, lush ’60s orchestral pop, dissonant punk, and avant-garde experimentation. It’s also a profoundly personal record, informed by the deaths of some longtime indie-rock allies: On “Winchester Mansion of Sound,” she pays tribute to Flat Duo Jets lead vocalist Dexter Romweber with a baroque piano lullaby that gives way to a lovingly nostalgic invocation of the “Down Down Baby” clapping-game sing-along. On the equally haunting and heavenly “Match-Lit,” she and guest Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire summon the spirit of The Sadies’ Dallas Good by quoting a song they all bonded over, the Mickey & Sylvia/Everlys standard “Love Is Strange.” At times, *Neon Grey Midnight Green*’s dream-state logic leads Case into bizarre uncharted territory: The theatrical spoken-word jazz poem “Tomboy Gold” is a lot closer to Laurie Anderson than Loretta Lynn. But while such outré excursions mark *Neon Grey Midnight Green* as the most eccentric entry in Case’s canon to date, the album is ultimately anchored by towering, string-swept torch songs—like “Wreck” and “An Ice Age”—that make a convincing case for Case’s gale-force voice to be recognized as the eighth wonder of the world.
Thrice’s 12th album is both a sequel to their 2021 release *Horizons / East* and part of the same body of work. Originally conceived as a double album, *Horizons* was split into two separate releases when the band decided to rerecord their 2003 breakthrough album *The Artist in the Ambulance* for its 20th anniversary. Still, vocalist/guitarist Dustin Kensrue and his bandmates tried to stay in the same headspace as *East* when they revisited the material for *West*. The result is a compelling rock album led by the infectious single “Albatross,” the snarling “Gnash,” and the moody churning of “The Dark Glow.”
“If you understood who I was back then, then you’d understand there was already no box for me,” Rochelle Jordan says of her musical journey in a behind-the-scenes mini-documentary for her album *Through the Wall*. Since her 2011 debut, the Los Angeles-based British Canadian artist has been carving out her own lane, a vintage yet futuristic fusion of ’90s R&B and pop, hip-hop, soul, and electronic music. Jordan’s fascination with the latter stems back to her childhood, when her older brother blasted jungle, drum ’n’ bass, UK garage, house—all shades of dance—in his bedroom, the rhythms seeping through her walls. The album’s title nods to those formative experiences, but it also carries spiritual meaning. Among the obstacles Jordan faced in her career, one of the most challenging was internal: impostor syndrome. As she learned to dismantle those mental barriers and step fully into her power, *Through the Wall* found its roots. Produced mainly by longtime collaborator KLSH (and additionally Byron the Aquarius, Terry Hunter, and DāM FunK), *Through the Wall* bumps like a night in the club, with luxe house grooves that could take dance floors from midnight to sunrise. That sparkling feeling of freedom lives in songs like “Sweet Sensation” and “Close 2 Me,” which radiate the exuberance of living in the moment, whether out with friends or wrapped up with a lover. Slipping into a sing-rap flow, Jordan makes room to flex on “Ladida” and “Around,” her earned braggadocio strutting like it’s dripped head-to-toe in the Versace she name-drops. Even after breakups (“Sum,” “Get It Off”), she’s still thriving, looking fly, and living in her exes’ heads rent-free. *Through the Wall* also pauses to reflect. On “Eyes Shut,” Jordan observes the struggles of those around her, questioning connection in a digital world and seeking purpose. “Got dopamine and can’t feel my soul/I just feel like there’s something more,” she muses. But the title track (“TTW”) asserts her resilience: “When you really wanna push through, okay/Let them say what they want to/Bussin’ through the wall.”
AFI is no stranger to goth’s dark arts, from the tortured hardcore anguish of 1999’s classic *Black Sails in the Sunset* and the smeared-guyliner sound of 2003’s commercial breakthrough *Sing the Sorrow* to the inky rock music of 2021’s *Bodies*. But on the California legends’ 12th studio album *Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…*, Davey Havok and company journey further into the shadowy sounds of 1980s rock than ever before. The anthemic “Blasphemy & Excess” is immediately reminiscent of Siouxie & The Banshees’ dark-clothing fantasias, while spring-loaded guitar lines bounce around “Ash Speck in a Green Eye” in a manner not unlike Joy Division’s singular sonic miserabilia. Splashy drums abound courtesy of longtime sticksman Adam Carson, whose machine-gun rhythms have mutated into pounding heartbeats—but the biggest change apparent is Havok’s voice, which has taken on a distinctly dramatic timbre after decades of howling into the void. AFI is still reinventing itself more than 30 years in, and longtime fans of this group would never expect anything less.
After back-to-back albums focused on their love of horror, experimental hip-hop trio clipping. head into the cybernetic unknown on their sixth, *Dead Channel Sky*. Even as their sound has become progressively more streamlined since the lurching abstractions of their self-titled debut on indie institution Sub Pop back in 2014, co-producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes conjure pure and jagged bolts of electricity across these 20 tracks, borrowing equally from the mechanical menace of early house and techno and the kitchen-sink IDM of Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. As with clipping.’s previous records, *Dead Channel Sky* is a highly collaborative affair: Wilco guitarist Nels Cline contributes scorched licks to the inside-out instrumental “Malleus” while indie hip-hop legend Aesop Rock lends his distinctive pipes to “Welcome Home Warrior.” But the speed-demon dexterity that is Daveed Diggs’ rapping skills remain as clipping.’s mainframe; he acrobatically hops across the album’s ones-and-zeroes eruptions like a computer virus avoiding detection, guiding listeners through *Dead Channel Sky*’s corroded landscape with ease.
