With a month of 2026 now under our belts, festivals have been announced and tours are underway. With indie and alternative rock music in a healthier place than ever, there’s an abundance of artists looking to take 2025’s reigns from bands as singular as Geese, or as buzzy Keo.
Tooth
Tooth repackage ‘indie sleaze’ with a more diverse sound than many contemporaries, brandishing the term on their long-sleeve under short-sleeve t-shirts. If you haven’t caught any them at one of their countless shows across East London and the UK in the last year, you can get excited for their debut single ‘Age Of Innocence’, which is out now.
Bleech 9:3
Setting a Sonic Youth pace as the backdrop to their introspective lyricism is Dublin’s Bleech 9:3. With three singles now under their belt, Bleech will be hitting the festival circuit this summer to follow up the footsteps of the Irish post-punk scene of 2018.
Brooki
Joining this wave of budding Irish rock is Brooki – picking up after PJ Harvey and Jeff Buckley where one might trace Keo back to Pearl Jam or The Smashing Pumpkins. After a string of intimate live shows across the UK and Ireland through late 2025, they’re scheduled to Truck and Tramlines festivals this year, ready to poise themselves as one of the leaders of this new grunge resurgence.
Sex Week
Sex Week are offering a darker dose of nostalgia, with their lethargic and melancholic art-rock. With two EPs now under their belt, the King and Queen of Bushwick offer a twelve song world of textured nostalgia, blending unconventional sounds with distorted pop melodies. For listeners of NewDad and Sorry; Sex Week are your next pool of noise to drown in.
Heidi Curtis
Already flexing weighty support slots for the likes of Sam Fender and Paolo Nutini is Heidi Curtis. Long-awaited debut single ‘Undone’ was released towards the back of last year, finally actualising Curtis’s indie and folk-rock sensibilities.
Raynor
After first garnering an audience from a set of unique and lo-fi Oasis, x, and y covers, Raynor put out his debut single ‘Brighter Than Before’ at the top of this year to huge reception. Raynor’s fans have been quick to jump to likenesses towards Bakar, King Krule, and other indie heads before them – whilst it comes out sounding a little more polished, you could be forgiven for thinking these songs were penned out of the same bedrooms as these predecessors.
Girl in the Year Above
If 2025 was the year they cut their teeth on the live circuit, 2026 looks set to be the one where this London-based outfit steps into wider visibility. Songs such as ‘Wet Paint’ offer the jangly sonics of 90s bands such as The Sundays and The La’s, with diary-entry song writing sure to connect with audiences once they hear it.
dust
Despite releasing debut album ‘Sky is Falling’ towards the end of last year, selling out their debut UK tour this month is just the energy dust look to carry through the rest of 2026. Deriving from Australia, dust find themselves in the same moody, post-punk niche you’ll have heard similar Aus-based bands like Radio Free Alice and HighSchool come from before.
Words by Hugo Harris
