Guitar Bands Making Rock Feel New Again

English Teacher brings an actual sense of humor to Leeds art rock, with Lily Fontaine's writing preventing the angular arrangements from becoming exercises.

Geese plays with the looseness of a band about to collapse, but its rhythmic control and Cameron Winter's elastic voice keep the songs intact.

Hotline TNT writes hooks large enough to survive walls of shoegaze fuzz, giving the band's distortion a melodic reason to exist.

bar italia's three vocalists preserve awkward pauses, competing perspectives and unresolved tension instead of smoothing the songs into conventional indie rock.

Horsegirl revisits noisy 1990s indie rock with the enthusiasm of genuine fans, but its concise arrangements avoid simple historical reenactment.

The Tubs plays jangle pop at nervous speed, with Owen Williams' strained vocal adding friction to otherwise bright guitar music.

Militarie Gun compresses hardcore energy into compact pop structures, proving a shouted vocal and a large chorus do not have to cancel each other out.

Heartworms pairs severe post-punk rhythms with theatrical delivery, giving its controlled visual world enough musical force to avoid feeling like styling.

Wednesday buries precise North Carolina stories under loud, bent guitars, allowing country detail and shoegaze volume to strengthen each other.

Maruja combines saxophone, post-rock dynamics and spoken intensity in live builds that grow genuinely frightening without depending on a conventional chorus.