New songs by new bands in 2025

A sort of best of the year. All new acts, or at least new to me. And all the highest quality, obviously. People Mover - Explaining Water Machine - Tiffany Mod Lang - Without You Event on the Downs - Smiling mariin k - Easy Sharp Pins - You Don't Live Here Anymore Say Something - The Pennys Toria Wooff - Lefty's Motel Room Labrador - Dry Out In June Old Master - Sheltered Life Prism Shores - Overplayed My Hand Nice Breeze -The Power Pop Song Good Flying Birds - Down On Me Quad90 - Boomerang Rhymies - I Dream Watching Sister Ray Davies - War Machine (The Purpose of a System Is What It Does) Slow Fiction - When Warren James – Costa Del Culzean This isn't online. Just buy it. Features James Kirk, fergawdsake.

People Mover - Cane Trash

Baby-I’m-bored vocals, slacker rock simplicity and druggy bliss. Are Brisbane’s People Mover spearheading a dolewave revival? Because this isn’t a million miles from Dick Diver or Bitch Prefect (dolewave was great at many things, but band names not so much).

More likely, though, they’re channelling the same low-level isolation and doleful desolation as more recent American acts like Horsegirl, Snail Mail and Soccer Mommy. People Mover’s formula is pretty straightforward: strum, thrum, drum. But it’s not easy making that sound so fresh and vigorous, or making the everyday feel like something you haven’t felt before.

This is 2025’s sleeper hit. Mark my words, k records will licence it and release their second album.

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band - New Threats from the Soul

Honky-tonk heartbreak and punch-drunk pop. The sound of summer 2025 (if you drink a lot and are emotionally unstable). If you liked Dancing On The Edge (if you didn’t, we’re not talking anymore because that’s a stone cold classic you heartless fool) then of course you’ll love this.

Bittersweet folk, unholy country and back porch blues, New Threats From The Soul really should go platinum in Nashville, Los Angeles and Stockholm. If you ever loved Bill Callahan and Will Oldham you will fall hard for this one.

Publicity Department - Old Master

Did you want an English Silver Jews? Good luck! You’re in with this immediate maudlin classic. What was that? “Like the workings of a jumbo jet, how I personally invited sex.”

Tender, passionate and quietly brutal, somewhere between James Yorkston and David Gedge. You need this album.

Rhymies - I Dream Watching

The sound of a northern English bedsit in 1981 with a cheap keyboard. Actually, no. The sound of San Francisco, 2025. Lauren Matsui of Seablite turns on the electronics and twists between glorious fatalism and fist-pumping tunes.

Yeah, there are nods to a couple of songs you likely know, but this is a first record so it leans on its influences and wears them very well. If you like, say, The Wake’s Factory output, Strawberry Switchblade and, I dunno, damn good songs then this fine, fine debut is for you.

The Pennys

There’s an idea that every indie band is a mediation of some variant of the Velvet Underground (I just made up that idea @me if you want). The Pennys take the VU variant of deadbeat crepuscular ballads, all gentle mystique, noirish glamour and intense romanticism.

This is hushed intimacy and gentle devastation. One of 2025’s great records. Like Tony Molina’s pocket symphonies finding Opal’s back catalogue. If I were 16 I’d be stalking them. Or writing their name on my school desk after being turned away from the tattoo parlour.

mariin k. - Rose Skin

In which mariin k. makes a correction to the idea that the Estonian shoegaze scene is insular by finding fresh ways to create an immediate classic of punchy riffs and melodic gauze.

mariin k. exists in a booming contemporary scene, and Rose Skin has a rich history behind it and a bright future ahead. “Essential” barely covers it.

Sharp Pins - Radio DDR

There’s an idea that every record in the DIY genre is really in the Guided By Voices genre. I get that, and I especially get it when Radio DDR could fit in to GBV’s mid-90s imperial period of pop, psych and punk.

Make no mistake, this album is all crashing guitars, clanging melodies and sweet, sweet tunes but it’s its own thing. The recording budget might not stretch to more than a cheap night out, but this is the sound of drinking cans of beer on the hood of a car with the cool kids while everyone you never liked went to prom night.

And? And it’s the sound of loneliness after getting dumped. And? It’s my favourite album of the year. Probably.

2024 in 20 songs by 20 new acts

Another great year if you were listening. All acts either brand new or new to me, or finally fulfilled their promise (helllo, Whitehlands) or made their best song (hello, Susan James) or I only just noticed (sorry, Royel Otis). Onwards. Susan James - Time Is Now Magic User - Like The Moon Radhika - Future Me Cœur À L’Index - Parler De Toi 猫猫OpenBar -う​そ​つ​き Sassyhiya - Kirsten Stewart Lightheaded - Moments Notice Sucker - Pretty Adventure Team - Bummed Out Torrey - Bounce Whitelands - How It Feels Royal Otis - Fried Rice Thistle Group & P Wits - Fog On My Brain Immersion | Cubzoa - Other Ways Rosettes - Souvenir Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band - Free from the Guillotine Picture This - Strum Augusta - The Beetles and the Bugs Skeggs - High Beaming Magic Fig - Goodbye Suzy

20 songs by 20 new acts from 2023

Another vintage year for global pop hits. All new acts - well, new as in haven't been on the year-end list before. New Estate have been around for ever; eventually enough people will take notice.

No one's claiming that new band Broken Blossom Threats feature debutantes, but this is their first record and they hit hard enough with inspiration from their teenage favourites to make you dizzy.

There's no way to stream the Livskraft album, for shame, because it's more amazing Gothenburg twisted folk, all litanic verses and hypnosis. If they start a cult - I mean, they could already be a cult - then I'm joining even if it means spending the next 6 months in their cellar.

Oh yeah, I know a couple of these singles came out at the end of 2022 but I waited for them to hit the import racks. You've seen international postage rates, right?

Deary - Fairground Dancer - Disposable Vape The Lost Days - For Today Broken Blossom Threats - You Don't Have To Know Where To Go Autocamper - Never End Colored Lights - I Used To Cook Jalen Ngonda - If You Don't Want My Love Expensive Music Band - Cool Aunty New Estate - Westie Dwaal Troupe - Mary Marionette Emilia Sisco - Trouble The Hazmats - Skewed View Spiral X - Deja Vu Cuticles - Cheese In My Brain The Gabys - Theresa Usurabi - Out Of This World Almond Joy - San Francisco Portable Radio - Good News Livskraft Myriam Gendron - Fais Dodo

Portable Radio - Counting To Three

Two things to know about Portable Radio: they like The Beach Boys a lot and Paul McCartney is their favourite Beatle. Counting To Three is an album of three-part harmonies, sentimental soft pop, featherlight psych and 1970s AM radio.

The third thing to know is that they’re not trying to be cool. Yes, Good News might sound a bit like Emitt Rhodes but it really sounds like ELO. Live Wire’s understated melodrama? That comes by way of The Commodores and The Carpenters.

If you want the melancholy of Big Star then listen to #1 Record. But if you want the melancholy songs of a band trying to make a number one record then listen to Portable Radio.

This is a wonderful collection of catchy, tightly written and dreamily romantic songs that richly deserve to nestle against your Bread records. They don’t sound like a million bucks, not quite, not yet. But give them the keys to Abbey Road Studios, a string quartet and a brass section, then they’ll sell a million records and lift the roof off the Royal Albert Hall.

Cuticles - Major Works

New Zealand's shitgaze aesthetic, following The Midnight Steppers, is alive with Cuticles making uneasy listening essential listening. Cuticles aren't at all cute - feeding corrosive tunes through a charity shop amp and beating them to a bloody pulp is far too caustic for that.

NZ antecedents might be Shoes This High and the 3Ds, although Cheese In My Brain and Steal My Statue reveal a familiarity with The Verlaines. But I hear more Sonic Youth distortion, Pavement atonal tunes, Swell Maps chaos and lyrical ranting by way of The Fall.

18 songs in 41 minutes. They say: "We are not able to be composed at all times and try to accept this state without guilt...parcel up some cracks." No kidding. All the songs are short and all of them are vital.

Spiral XP - It's Been A While

No question Spiral XP have the first two Ride EPs and Whirlpool by Chapterhouse. Deja Vu (maybe that's tongue-in-cheek self-referential) is a pure vortex of crashing guitars, melodious mayhem and a thunderous call to the indie disco dancefloor. I can hear the riotous uproar of early Dinosaur Jr in there as well.

Free Thinking and The Hunger are more adventurous, hinting at a working knowledge of My Bloody Valentine's Soon - glide guitar, disorientating rhythm and ghostly atmosphere.

There's a lot of shoegaze revival (at least no one's using 'nu gaze' anymore) and most of it's pedestrian retreads of faded songs. Spiral XP, though, have stuck fireworks under old sounds and sent them into the stratosphere. Definitely ones to watch. My £5 says Sonic Cathedral are preparing an album deal for summer 2023.

Dwaal Troupe - Lucky Dog

The Chicago wing of the Elephant 6 fan club? Maybe - they share Masters of the Hemisphere's skewed pop, Apples in Stereo's narcotic bliss and Elf Power's hazy hypnosis.

But there's also anti-folk friction here - think Kimya Dawson or Adam Green solo, rich psych desolation and romantic solitude. Dwaal is Afrikaans for "a dreamy, dazed, absent-minded, or befuddled state" (thanks, Google), so full marks for self-awareness and full marks also for the brass section.

Dwaal Troupe have an especially strong knack of writing tender ballads, revealing greater depths to the all-out pop assault and suggesting there's even better and brighter things to come.

Dancer

The talk-singing reminds me of Sue Tompkins' (Life Without Buildings) antsy defiance, matched by fidgety post-punk guitars and taut sprung bass like the the first two Go-Betweens albums. You know all the other reference points - Talking Heads, The Fall and The Raincoats if you're old; Dry Cleaning, Black Country, New Road, and Display Homes if you're still paying off your student loan.

So others do it and others have done it, but Dancer are special. And not just because they rhyme "couple of glasses" with "catharsis" or have a song called Chris Whitty's Inner World. Don't ask me to explain their alchemy. Sometimes - rarely, that's the point - a band turns up, traps lightning in a jar and leaves you gaping.

All of Dancer are in other bands who you, being cooler than me, already know everything about. You'll surely agree, though, that they might just as well have a song called We're Better Than Other Bands And You Know It. They've given themselves the search engine-proof name Dancer with a self-titled release. No matter. I'm certain Domino and Rough Trade have their chequebooks open in the first round of a bidding war. Dancer are, after all, the best new band in Britain.

20 new songs by 20 new acts from 2022

What a year for new music! Twenty songs, then, from the 2022 vintage. All by new bands, or new to me. Or in some cases like Amateur Hour and Chronophage and Lewsberg, bands I didn't put on previous years no matter they were as excellent then as they are now.

Yes, I know now that Apollo Ghosts have been going forever, but I only found them this year when they were supporting a band I like. The moral of the story: go to gigs, watch the support bands, find a new favourite band that week.

Doe St - Pandanus

Sinaïve - Ténèbres

Taste - Passed Out In Petals

Eggs - Walking Down To The Cemetery Road

Jim Nothing - Nowhere Land

Spice World - Dying To Go

Fortitude Valley - It's The Hope That Kills You

The Martial Arts - Bethany

Beachheads - Jupiter

Fleur - Besoin De Personne

Astrel K - 'Is It It Or Is It i?'

Chronophage - Summer To Fall

Amateur Hour - Feel My Loneliness

Apollo Ghosts - I'll Be Around

Flinch - thanks Ophelia

Gonora Sounds - Wapinda Mazviri

Semi Trucks - Motorbike Riding Star

Lewsberg - In Your Hands

Green/Blue - Same Waste Of Time

Shawn Lee & The Angels Of Libra - Souvenir

Anna Savage - Queens Rd.

Stripped back ghostly folk like Maxine Funke from the present or Sybille Baier from the past. It really could be from any time.

All spindly fragility, boldly stark and introspective. You could play this next to Flowertown for hushed emotional intimacy. Just two songs now, but as it's so high quality we need an Anna Savage album.

Fleur - Besoin De Personne

Four to the floor nothern soul flavour which asks the really important question: what would Serge Gainsbourg writing for France Gall in the early 80s mod revival sound like?

The answer is: amazing and irresistible. Romantics will want to buy the 7" immediately. Everyone else will knock back another drink and head straight to the dancefloor.

Spice World - Dying To Go

A scratch band with no expense spent and very likely no rehearsal time, Dying To Go sounds like it was made up on the spot and everything fell into place just so. Life's good like that sometimes.

They remind me of early Dick Diver (campfire acoustic pop) and Moses Campbell (ask your obscuro muso friend) and The Mountain Goats (rugged passion). They don't sound like the Spice Girls or any bands named after films except maybe They Might Be Giants.

I'm less keen on What A Pity What A Shame, which suggests lightning doesn't strike twice. There's an album next year on Tenth Court and Meritorio, which I'm looking forward to and hoping that, after all, lightning strikes several times.

Sinaïve - super 45 t.

You can’t judge a record by its cover - this one is a tribute to Spacemen 3’s The Perfect Prescription - but you can by its title: Stereolab’s fingerprints are all over lead track Ténèbres. Well, mostly - they hijack The Field Mice’s Sensitive for the tune. This song won’t go out of style after this season.

They play a similar trick - motorik beats and guitar hypnosis - on Trash Mental, drop the tempo for ultra-styled minimalism on Il faudra traverser, then perhaps inevitably switch on the transient random-noise bursts for Space Ronsard.

There’s no getting away from the killer pop tune Ténèbres, but Sinaïve show on this EP they’ve got enough smarts to mark them down as ones to watch.