Browsing Tag

pop punk

Rachel DeeLynn – Gut Feeling: Histironic Pop-Punk for Anyone Who Mistook Red Flags for Butterflies

Posted on 8 July 2026

With her latest infectious pop-punk anthem, Gut Feeling, Rachel DeeLynn injects the eccentric accessibility of Chappell Roan into a high-voltage hit that is enough to make the Paramore discography sound like it needs to be put on life support. The alternative pop-rock artist has already earned Grammy consideration, major radio play across BBC and KISS FM, and back-to-back number one singles on the World Indie Music Charts, but Gut Feeling leaves the icon standing on top of a fresh detonation point.

Every progression has a way of finding new means to broadside adrenaline into you through chameleonic shifts, whether DeeLynn is snarling as though possessed by hindsight and refusing to silence her intuition, or spiralling through artful, avant-garde, camp-pop phrasing.

If you have ever been gaslit, waved away the red flags, chased the butterflies and come out the other side scathed, Gut Feeling is the ultimate vindicating alt-pop-punk anthem. DeeLynn’s biting rock instrumentation and pop hooks land with the force of someone who has already proved her commercial pull while refusing to sand down her edges. There is a live wire of vitality and conviction running through the hit; it is pop-punk without the stain of mainstream pandering, as raw and revolutionary as it always should have been. We need to protect her seminal originality at all costs.

Gut Feeling is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Dancing in the Fallout by Primordial Alien Carried Good Charlotte Melancholy into Apocalyptic Pop Punk

Posted on 5 July 2026

With a melody that echoes the melancholic weight of Good Charlotte’s The Chronicles of Life and Death, augmented with My Chemical Romance-esque histrionic energy and red-hot guitar work, Dancing in the Fallout by Primordial Alien is the ultimate anthem for anyone feeling the heat of the apocalypse as it approaches.

Answers to ennui feel impossible, so, instead, the single grants permission to loosen your grip on the anxiety attached to our Anthropocene and escape back into emo pop punk as it should be: theatrical and cathartic, with sticky-sweet hooks to pour your heart out to. The riffs carry 00s alternative rock melodrama like a life raft.

Primordial Alien is the alternative rock and pop punk project of Schuylar Holland, professionally known as Infinite, a US Army veteran based in Oklahoma. Since beginning the project in December 2023, Holland has shifted from heavier industrial metal origins into more melodic, narrative-rich releases.

For fans of My Chemical Romance and Green Day, with Panic! at the Disco’s theatrical streak flickering at the edges, Dancing in the Fallout is a cinematic inferno and proof of how seminal Primordial Alien has become to the remit of alt-rock.

Dancing in the Fallout is now available to stream on all major platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Vagabond – Pretty Boy: MILF Melodrama with Pop-Punk Hooks and Rotten-Eyed Swagger

Posted on 19 June 2026

Vagabond orchestrated the ultimate MILF melodrama with Pretty Boy, a rough-around-all-the-right-edges melodic punk single that delivers one of the most honest depictions of youthful, unfulfilled lust. If you can imagine how it would have resonated if Stacey’s Mom carried the full weight of self-defacing teen testosterone, you would get a good idea of how sharp the raw contours of Pretty Boy feel, all hormonal voltage, smirking confession and bedroom-wall frustration. The York band take punk influence from both sides of the Atlantic, injecting bouncy, hook-impaled pop-punk euphoria into snarling energy that borrows a few echoes of Johnny Rotten-esque debauched angst.

Formed in 2023, Vagabond have built a name across the Northern music scene through explosive live shows, blistering riffs, relentless bass and pounding drums, balancing playful observations with emotional punch. Their DIY ethos runs through Pretty Boy with the same sweaty immediacy as the performance itself, keeping the track sharp and scrappy while leaving its rougher pleasures intact. With its collision of classic pop-punk fun, modern melodic punk edge and cheeky social theatre, Pretty Boy proves Vagabond can turn adolescent fantasy into a full-throttle anthem.

Pretty Boy is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

The Radio Addicts Gave Britpop a Pop-Punk Sugar Rush with ‘Let’s Party Like It’s the 90s’

Posted on 16 June 2026

The kids are more than alright if The Radio Addicts’ latest single, Let’s Party Like It’s the 90s, is anything to go by. The Bolton teen indie punk-pop band made the Britpop answer to pop punk sound like a sweaty house party detonating through a stadium PA, with riff-driven swagger, sharp hooks and a chorus built to send pints, limbs and common sense flying.

Recorded at The Kaiser Chiefs’ Leeds studio, The Nave, and produced by Andy Hawkins, the single strips away modern malaise and replaces it with the riotous energy of the pre-Y2K era. As teens, The Radio Addicts may have been too young to be there themselves, but they didn’t miss a pixel when conjuring what it looked like to truly let go with no fear that a phone camera would capture the moment hedonism freed you from your shackles of sensibility.

There’s no room to wonder why hype is amassing around the band. Their sold-out shows, sold-out debut vinyl EP, Bolton Wanderers stadium plays and This Feeling support all point towards a runaway unsigned force.

It is practically a safety hazard to play them through your speakers, with anthemic sparks flying from hooks and vocals that bridge sticky-sweet cheeky charisma with punk renegade uninhibition.

Let’s Party Like It’s the 90s is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Victories Threw Pop Punk Back to Its Scarred Y2K Glory Days with ‘C U L8R (Alligator)’

Posted on 23 May 2026

Dropped during Mental Health Month, C U L8R (Alligator) by Victories throws pop-punk fans right back to the Y2K glory days of the genre, when Fall Out Boy and Simple Plan reigned supreme with their ability to leave your heart in your throat by wearing their scarred heartstrings on their guitar hooks.

It is an absolute monolith of an anthem, amping itself up with the bitter, biting emotion that refuses to remain an undercurrent. It sparks right through the synapses of the track, reaching the epitome of candid urgency while handling depression with more nuance than you’ll find in any token Instagram post. Written from inside the impossible cycle of feeling like a burden while feeling burdened by everyone else, C U L8R (Alligator) turns mental collapse into a melodic flare fired through the dark.

You might assume a world apart in production quality and technical talent between MCR’s I’m Not Okay and a 2026 hit from a breakthrough band in Montreal, but Victories will show you exactly how wrong you are. Produced by Kyle Marchant at Room 21 Studios, the single channels the live energy of A Day to Remember, the melodic clarity of New Found Glory, and the emotional directness of Neck Deep, all filtered through the flames of Victories’ impassioned vindication when tackling mental health matters.

C U L8R (Alligator) is now available to stream on all major platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Plug your heartstrings into the frequency of desire with Post Script Philosophy’s alt-rock overdose of emotion, ‘Butterflies’

Posted on 24 April 2026

Post Script Philosophy launched a new alt-rock inquiry into the subjugation of romanticism with their latest single, Butterflies, which is set to drop on April 24th.

Augmented by the overdriven ferocity of grunge, the anthemic hooks of pop-punk with all the melodic phrasing of 00s alt-rock, the single ticks every conceivable alt-rock box as it plugs your heartstrings into the frequency of a diehard romantic in the throes of losing control of their emotions.

Every progression feels alchemised to visualise the torrid flux of emotions derived from uncertainty and anxiety as you try to find a foothold in a fledgling relationship, only to sink further into the soul-churning sickness of desire. There are flashes of Jimmy Eat World in the emotional voltage and hints of Silverchair in the scorched intensity, yet Post Script Philosophy keep the nerve endings of the track wholly their own, letting the chorus surge with wounded urgency and melodic conviction.

Butterflies carries a weight that reaches far beyond youthful yearning. The band first built their name in the mid-2000s through EP releases, radio attention, and emotionally charged live shows across Australia’s East Coast. After the devastating loss of bassist Josh Ingram, the project came to a halt. Seventeen years later, renewed connection between the remaining members brought them back to creating together, and Butterflies now stands as part grief-soaked reckoning, part forward motion, charged with memory, fear, and meaning.

Butterflies is now available to stream on all major platforms via this link.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Lauren Ash- F.A.F.O: Sticky-Sweet Augmented Antagonism Meets the Adrenalized Vindication of Y2K Pop-Punk

Posted on 24 April 2026
Lauren Ash

Lauren Ash’s stripes as a pop punk icon went up in a blaze of glory in her latest single, F.A.F.O, which has already become a fan favourite during her recent tours due to the sticky-sweet augmented antagonism driving every second of it. Lauren Ash, widely known on screen for her major role in the series Superstore before tearing into music with full force, has steadily built a second identity around her sonic ferocity. After her debut album Call Me When You Get This, headline shows across Canada and sold-out dates in Glasgow, Manchester and London, F.A.F.O lands with the confidence of an artist who knows exactly how to weaponise a hook.

It delivers the bite of 90s riot grrrl with the punchy, high-octane rush of Y2K pop punk, while carrying the kind of chant-ready adrenaline that makes total sense of its live reputation. She’s the girl all the bad guys want, to throw a Bowling for Soup reference into the mix, as she incites a riot against men who think they can breeze through life without ever paying for the consequences of their actions, expecting women to suffer whatever self-destructive absurdity without protest. Vindication runs thick in the veins of this radio and anthem-ready earworm. It absolutely slaps.

F.A.F.O is now available on all major streaming platforms. Find your preferred way to listen on the artist’s official website.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Riot Grrrl is Revived Through the Feral Siren-esque Sound of A VOID’s Antagonistic Anthem, ‘A Fish in Your Pocket’

Posted on 23 April 2026

Answering the question, what could pop punk be if it allowed its riffs to hit harder, was injected with the sleaze of the Sunset Strip in the 80s and evocatively augmented by nods to the valley girl inception of Riot Grrrl, is the latest single and music video from the Paris-born, London-based trio, A VOID.

Fish in Your Pocket is an explosion of sonic subversion, each progression showing you the meaninglessness of your expectation as the atmosphere and intensity shift beyond the remits of anticipation, which only adds to the adrenalising fervour that has become synonymous with the fiercely talented powerhouse helmed by Camille Alexander. Either she was born with natural talent and a ferocious sense of charisma, or she drank a potion in Wonderland to become a visceral, larger-than-life icon of affronting, feral in all the right places, siren-esque in all the rest, alt-rock. Everything about the latest single and music video is an exhibition of what it means to forget rolling with the punches and start delivering hammer blows with a kiss.

There are flashes of L7, Hole, and The Distillers in the salacious snarling swagger of the seminal single from the Paris-born, London-based catalysts of sonic carnage, who have built their name on explosive live shows and emotionally charged songwriting, recently taking that voltage to huge audiences. If we’re all made by design, A VOID were destined to dominate.

Watch the official music video for Fish in Your Pocket on YouTube now.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Shape or Form’s Debut Single, ‘Don’t Turn Away’ Hung Lynchian Melodies, Scuzzy Pop-Punk Antagonism and Alt-90s Nostalgia in the Gallery of Their Ingenuity 

Posted on 1 April 2026

‘Don’t Turn Away’ may ease you in with woozy function-band melodic 80s nostalgia, the kind you’d expect to see people swaying and swooning to in a David Lynch film, but the debut single from Williamsport-based powerhouse Shape or Form, which keeps its tuning geared towards the past to drench the present in the kind of nostalgia that instantly makes your angsty soul feel right at home, dials up the pop-punk antagonism to the scuzziest degree, delivering a grungy homage to the alt-90s.

If Teenage Fanclub, Weezer and other bands in that deliciously visceral vein constitute your playlist staples, this lo-fi slacker jam is essential listening. There’s definitive talent to the way Shape or Form simmers tension into the release; the melodic ease of the opening gives way to a rougher, fuzz-frayed charge without losing its hooky core. That push and pull gives the track its staying power, landing somewhere between basement-show scruffiness and cinema-lit longing.

Formed in late 2023 in North Central Pennsylvania, the four-piece came together fast, driven by shared chemistry and a love of songs that carry familiar hooks without sounding stale. With John on drums, Micah on bass, Patrick on lead guitar, and Vaughn steering rhythm guitar and vocals, the band already sound locked in.

Don’t Turn Away is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Keith Z’s pop-punk hooks tore into the contradictions of the ‘friendzone’ with ‘Just Friends’

Posted on 22 March 2026

Fans of All-American Rejects, All Time Low, and New Found Glory will find a new pop-punk obsession in the infectiously sticky-sweet yet scorn-laced latest release from Keith Z, Just Friends. The Australian artist, who cut his teeth performing covers before stepping into his own catalogue, carried his livewire energy straight into the core of the track, giving it the kind of immediacy that feels designed for sweat-soaked alt club dancefloors.

Sonically, there’s no arguing with the production. Keith Z’s songwriting remains razor-sharp as ever as he exhibits a natural ease with turning vocal refrains into efficacious rallying cries, while the instrumentals stay pinned at a fever pitch throughout. The hooks land fast and linger longer than expected, pulling listeners straight into the emotional churn of the track without giving them much room to breathe.

Lyrically, Just Friends leans into more provocative territory. The narrative will inevitably rub a few listeners the wrong way, particularly those who bristle at the conversation around the friendzone. Yet that tension is exactly where the track finds its bite. In a perfect world, men and women would create toxicity-free friendships, but a quick glance at reality makes it clear that idealism is naivety in a facade, and the dynamics of the friendzone are never as black and white as some would like to believe.

Someone had to address it, and no one could have said it better. Keith Z has the cheeky sardonic charm that would allow him to get away with murder.

Just Friends is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast