The 40 Best New Bands Of 2019
Every autumn here at Stereogum, we look long and hard at the last 12 months and pinpoint which new artists make us excited about the future of music. We then organize those artists into our annual Best New Bands list, celebrating what they’ve already accomplished and highlighting them as someone to keep an eye on moving forward. This year is no different, and the crop of 2019 musicians is just as inspiring as ever. Music somehow keeps being good despite everything else being bad, and we’re all happy to keep listening as long as everyone else keeps making it. (Corny, I know!)
The caveats we’ve placed on this list from the beginning still apply. “New” is a subjective term, especially now that we’re all online and everything is happening all the time. Some of these artists have been around for a few years, others only have a couple songs to their name so far, but all of them are making music worth hearing. We also continue to call this the Best New Bands list, even though (as you’ll see) there are quite a few not-bands on the list, but we are absolutely apeshit about alliteration. Can’t get enough of the stuff.
We purposefully run this list a bit before year-end list season, and we keep in mind that an artist’s upward trajectory can’t be tied to a year the way an album release date can. Many of these names will be familiar to regular Stereogum readers who keep up with our daily music posts and Band To Watch column. If you revisit our lists from years past — now handily archived right over here — you’ll see that our taste is impeccable. So make sure you get familiar with Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands Of 2019, presented below in alphabetical order. You can also listen to a playlist of our picks on on Spotify. Enjoy! –James Rettig
100 Gecs
LOCATION: Los Angeles CA / Chicago, IL
Listening to 100 Gecs feels like snorting crushed computer chips. The data powder contains traces of our collective, scatterbrained music memory from the past 15 years — from Blink-182 to Soulja Boy, Sleigh Bells to Skrillex, ska, pop punk, crunkcore, and bubblegum — filtered through the current internet echo chamber. Dylan Brady and Laura Les echo the maximalist, masochistic spirit of 2019. Their debut album, 1000 Gecs, is 23 minutes of exhilarating aural assault. –Julia Gray
Black Midi
LOCATION: London, UK
Black Midi managed to ascend to nigh-mythical status in their home country with barely any online presence and barely more recorded material. Then they hit Stateside, and it all made sense. Their live show is a spectacle to behold, a roiling mass of grooves and riffs and beats mutating and exploding off in a million different directions. And with their debut album Schlagenheim, they successfully managed to get that electric anything-is-possible feeling down on wax. No matter how many times you listen, their songs never fail to surprise. –Peter Helman
Blueface
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
This charming rap rascal is working in a couple of long-established traditions — West Coast rappers pushing against the beat and over-the-top slapstick sex-comedy. But because he’s suddenly more popular than any of the figures who influenced him, Blueface looks, to a certain segment of the population, like a sign of the aesthetic apocalypse. That’s the burden of success, even when you’re fundamentally too silly to be taken seriously. Baby, you see this face tat? He doesn’t want a job. –Tom Breihan