Future of Music 2026

Party-starting punk anthems. Community-driven gigs. Foo Fighters support slots. Fiery political songs. Dick Move can do it all.

Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s self-styled “socialist party-punk” band are now on their third album, Dream, Believe, Achieve, which bulldozed all in its path last year.

Dick Move, thrillingly led from the front by the impassioned Lucy Suttor, took on toxic men, capitalist politics, and patriarchal systems with lacerating honesty, which featured 13 blistering tracks delivered in just 25 minutes.

Standout tracks were strewn throughout the album, particularly “Nurses”, a snarling attack on the strategies of neoliberalism governments, and “Fuck It”, an equally loud and uncompromising rejection of outdated systems.

Dream, Believe, Achieve made it all the way to No. 2 on our year-end New Zealand albums list, and nominations at the Taite Music Prize and Aotearoa Music Awards followed this year.

Punk is all about speaking truth to power, and Dick Move do it better than most. With Aotearoa contending with an election in a few months’ time, there’s never been a better time to blast their angry (but hopeful) anthems. —Conor Lochrie

Earth Tongue are loud. Very loud. And somehow there’s just two of them.

After making the move to Europe — Berlin, to be precise — the Aotearoa fuzz-rock duo have quickly built up a strong following on the continent’s live music scene, with shows in their home country also regularly selling out.

Their rambunctious and theatrical third album, Dungeon Vision, arrived last year, which guitarist Gussie Larkin and drummer Ezra Simons finalised in Los Angeles with a little help from garage-rock king Ty Segall.

“Ty’s been a big driving force,” Simons previously said. “We supported him in New Zealand back in 2023, and he’s backed us ever since even bringing us on tour through Europe and the UK in 2024.”

Dungeon Vision hits hard wherever one listens to it, but Earth Tongue really deserve to be heard up close. If they come through your town next, make sure you go see them. —Conor Lochrie

Folk Bitch Trio make music that feels like it could have arrived at any point in the past 60 years and still made perfect sense.

The Melbourne trio, made up of Gracie Sinclair, Jeanie Pilkington, and Heide Peverelle, began singing together after meeting in high school, forming properly in 2020 with the release of their debut single “Houselights”.

Five years later, they released Now Would Be a Good Time, a debut album that sounds both gently old-world and unmistakably present.

There is an obvious timelessness to their sound, with close harmonies, acoustic arrangements, and the kind of vocal chemistry that can make a room go quiet.

Their songs could sit comfortably alongside early ’60s Greenwich Village folk, the indie-folk revival of the 2010s, or the current world of Boygenius, Julia Jacklin and Angie McMahon.

Phoebe Bridgers herself summed it up neatly, calling them “Boygenius if it was from the ’40s or something.”

But Folk Bitch Trio are not a nostalgia act. Their songwriting is full of modern nerves, sharp humour, and the emotional mess of being young and hyper-aware. Now Would Be a Good Time is delicate without being precious, intimate without feeling small, and often funny in the places you least expect.

The industry has taken notice. Now Would Be a Good Time earned nominations at the Australian Music Prize, the ARIA Awards and the J Awards, where Folk Bitch Trio won Unearthed Artist of the Year. With a Jagjaguwar signing behind them and APRA recognition following close behind, Folk Bitch Trio are no longer one of Australia’s best-kept secrets. —Jade Kennedy

We saw this coming.

“Start getting your Taite Music Prize outfit ready, Alexander-Marsters,” we told Geneva Alexander-Marsters, the restless creative behind Geneva AM, last year while hailing Pikipiki as one of the best Aotearoa albums of 2025.

Not only did a nomination for the 2026 Taite Music Prize duly come her way, but Geneva AM also won the Best Independent Debut Award thanks to her stunning debut album.

More awards glory could be on the way, too, with Geneva AM nominated in three categories at the forthcoming 2026 Aotearoa Music Awards, including for Album of the Year.

All of this critical acclaim is more than deserved for a musician so joyously comfortable in her artistic convictions.

“For Pikipiki I wanted to be in a healing space and sometimes that means seeking community, manifesting joy, creating space for renewal – you don’t have to do that alone… I feel like I’ve been crafting some kind of positive force field that I’m about to throw over everyone,” she previously told Under the Radar.

On Pikipiki, Alexander-Marsters bends classic genres — chiefly disco and dance — to her own will, reframing and rejuvenating them, utilising them to explore and honour her Māori heritage. —Conor Lochrie

Does Gen Z finally have its own Silverchair? If you’ve ever listened to HEADSEND, the answer is clearly yes.

The Byron Bay trio of Rasmus King, Kyuss King, and Bon Soric are at an earlier career stage than many of this year’s other Future 25 acts, which speaks to the strength of their first releases.

Whether it’s the Queens of the Stone Age-indebted “Do Do”, or the brooding “And Angel”, or the bruising “Stove”, HEADSEND are the sort of band that lead music journalists to exuberantly declare, “Guitar music is back.”

Guitar music never went anywhere, of course, but HEADSEND’s raw anthems sweep you up in such a fit of excitement for the future of alternative rock.

Angel Glands, their new EP, was recorded live in-studio Nick DiDia, who knows a thing or three about ’90s rock bands — he’s worked with Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, and Stone Temple Pilots — and the record contains muscular rhythms and ear-bashing riffs that would have made those esteemed bands proud.

Thanks to their burgeoning live circuit reputation, HEADSEND have quickly earned key festival slots around the UK and Europe. If they ever bring back Big Day Out (and they should), they need to be the first booking. —Conor Lochrie

Inertia are not interested in staying neatly inside the lines of heavy music.

The Sydney band have built their name on a sound that pulls dark pop, soul, emo, and metalcore into the same storm. Think the weight of Loathe, Spiritbox, and Thornhill colliding with flashes of The Weeknd and SZA, then dragged into something heavier, moodier, and more volatile.

That contrast has become Inertia’s greatest strength. Their music can move from sleek and melodic to explosive in seconds, balancing Latouche’s soaring vocal presence with driving riffs, sharp production, and an emotional intensity that never feels forced.

The fact they have self-produced every release only adds to the sense of control behind the chaos, with the band’s DIY ethic sitting at the centre of everything they do.

Their rise has been hard-earned. Across more than five million streams, a growing national following and releases through Resist Records, Inertia have carved out a serious place in Australia’s alternative scene.

Their debut album Second Shadow pushed that momentum even further, leading into a sold-out national tour with Headwreck and Synge in 2025.

They have also become a formidable live act, sharing stages with some of the biggest names in heavy and alternative music, including Polaris, Dayseeker, Northlane, Ocean Grove, Thornhill, Void of Vision, Holding Absence, Caskets, Thy Art Is Murder, and Story of the Year.

Heavy enough to level a room, melodic enough to stay lodged in your head, and ambitious enough to keep warping the shape of modern metal, Inertia are one of Australia’s most compelling heavy acts right now. —Jade Kennedy

Adam Hyde might have first made his name as one-half of electronic duo Peking Duk, but Keli Holiday is no side note.

What began as a post-breakup creative outlet has evolved into a fully realised solo project, full of emotional swagger, new wave shimmer, and songs that know exactly when to wink and when to wound.

Holiday’s music pulls from new wave, indie sleaze, pop, dance, and rock ’n’ roll, landing somewhere between broken-hearted balladry and full-body party music. It’s flamboyant, funny, sincere, and occasionally heartbreaking, but never careless.

His latest era has pushed him firmly into breakout territory. The ARIA No. 1 single “Dancing2” became a viral force on TikTok, soundtracking tens of thousands of creations, before Holiday opened the ARIA Awards with a star-studded performance of the track and took home the award for Best Video.

His Like A Version cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” also struck a nerve, racking up more than a million views within its first day online and earning an official release after fans demanded it.

Holiday’s second album, Capital Fiction, has only sharpened the picture. The record hit No. 1 on the Australian Albums chart, No. 3 on the ARIA Albums chart, and No. 5 on the Vinyl chart, marking a major moment for a project that began as something Hyde wasn’t even sure he would release.

What makes Keli Holiday work is that beneath the unserious-pop sparkle and theatrical bravado, there is genuine emotional weight. Hyde has built a world where heartbreak can still dance, where longing can wear sunglasses indoors, and where one song can be both a joke and a gut-punch. —Jade Kennedy

Luca George writes like someone trying to make loneliness feel less lonely.

The Aotearoa singer-songwriter has already built serious momentum, amassing more than 6 million total artist streams and a growing social audience, including a strong TikTok following. Songs like “Better Apart”, “Crying in the Bathroom”, and “brOKen” have earned support across radio, streaming, and student networks in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, while his debut EP You’ll Never Know Me Sober introduced an artist with a gift for turning heartbreak into widescreen pop confessionals.

That gift has not gone unnoticed. “Suit of Blue” earned a nomination at the 2024 APRA Silver Scroll Songwriting Awards, while Troye Sivan also hand-picked George as the only New Zealand artist to take part in an APRA songwriting camp he curated.

His second EP, Say hi to Paula, felt like a major step forward. Created with collaborators including Gabrielle Aplin, Spacey Jane’s Caleb Harper, and producer Konstantin Kersting, the five-track project — released late last year — moves between upbeat pop, mid-tempo ache, and devastating balladry, all while circling themes of heartbreak, loneliness, hope, and trying to feel less broken.

“We’re in the business of connection,” George told Rolling Stone AU/NZ. “If you can find yourself in any of those songs and feel a little bit less alone, I think that’s when I’ve done my job.”

Now based in London after years of dreaming about the move, George is stepping into a bigger world with the same raw, open-hearted songwriting that first made people listen. —Jade Kennedy

Memphis LK has always understood that dance music can hit hardest when it lets a little heartbreak in.

The Melbourne singer-songwriter, producer, and DJ, born Memphis Kelly, first stepped into her solo era in 2019 after previously making music as part of Saatsuma.

Having learned Ableton as a teenager, she built her world from the ground up, carving out a sound rooted in electronic music but guided by feeling as much as rhythm.

Across EPs including 1, Too Much Fun, True Love and Consequences, and Say, Memphis LK has refined a style that sits in the sweet spot between melancholy and euphoria. Influenced by artists like Four Tet, James Blake, and Burial as well as UK garage, breakbeat, and Detroit electro, her music is both club-ready and deeply intimate.

That balance has made her a compelling presence on festival stages too, with sets at Splendour in the Grass, Beyond the Valley, Listen Out, Pitch Music & Arts, The Great Escape, and Way Out West, alongside recognition from the AIR Awards and Music Victoria Awards.

Recent singles including “Cherry n Coke”, “DMW”, “Skyflower”, “Fixated”, and “That Boy’s Not Nice” have continued to expand her palette, but it’s her recent single “Some Kinda Heaven” that feels especially luminous. The song captures what Memphis LK does best: turning tension, tenderness, and release into immersive modern dance music.

Arriving as she embraces motherhood with her new baby, Xuri, “Some Kinda Heaven” carries a fresh sense of perspective without losing the pulse that has always powered her work. Memphis LK’s music still belongs to the dancefloor, but it lingers long after the lights come up. —Jade Kennedy

It makes so much sense that Black Country, New Road asked Mouseatouille to support them not once but twice.

Like the English post-rock outfit, Mouseatouille are an extensive ensemble of tight-knit collaborators who put the collective first, although The Microphones often seem like a more obvious sonic touchstone.

Mouseatouille’s nine (!) members sounded magically cohesive, in spite of the lineup’s sprawling size, on the lush and melancholic DJ Set, one of our favourite Australian albums of 2025.

At once grand and intimate, often within the span of one song, the album found Mouseatouille traversing delicate indie-folk, orchestral chamber-pop, and chaotic noise-rock, gamely incorporating a number of instruments into the mixture, including violin, clarinet, synths, and guitars.

Originally started as a recording project for lead singer Harry Green and drummer Spencer Noonan during high school, Mouseatouille are now thriving as a massive ensemble because they simply sound like a bunch of mates gleefully experimenting with music for the fun of it. —Conor Lochrie

Muroki was the first artist signed to BENEE’s independent label, Olive Records, for a reason.

A shapeshifting artist of the highest order, equally comfortable making pop, reggae, and indie songs, Muroki has been making waves since, well, “Wavy” became a breakout hit five years ago.

Since then Muroki has bounced from country to country, soaking up different music scenes and cultures, from Raglan to Kenya and Berlin.

That’s why his highly anticipated debut album, Amber Skies, sounded like a truly global affair when it was released this year, written and recorded as it was while Muroki was living a nomadic lifestyle between Germany, the Portuguese coast, back with his family in Kenya, and in Aotearoa.

Muroki returned home to celebrate Amber Skies with his first New Zealand tour in three years, including a special show at Auckland Arts Festival. —Conor Lochrie

When we launched our first-ever immersive Scene Report last year, Ōtepoti Dunedin was the standout choice.

2025 was one of the best years for Dunedin’s music scene in a generation, with bands like Dale Kerrigan, IVY, and Vagina Dry releasing career-best work.

It was another band from the city’s tight-knight alternative rock community, however, that released a record on the hallowed Flying Nun label: Pearly*.

A word-of-mouth sensation around Aotearoa, Pearly* announced themselves in a major way with Not So Sweet, their eclectic and atmospheric debut album.

While overseas outfits like Oasis, Pixies, and Radiohead are clear inspirations, the influence of legendary Flying Nun bands such as The Clean is also imprinted on their sound, with Pearly* continuing the proud lineage of indie rock in Australasia’s most historic music city.

If there’s technically nothing ‘new’ going on in Pearly*s music — they blend angsty, brooding lyrics with fuzzed-out, distorted guitars — it’s the four members’ individual talent and collective interplay that makes them sound so exciting and necessary. Dunedin’s next breakout band is here. —Conor Lochrie

Australia hasn’t lacked for brooding post-punk bands in the 2020s, but Radio Free Alice have still managed to carve out their own space in a crowded market.

Paying homage to bands of the ’80s like The Smiths and The Cure, their brand of post-punk is energetic and playful, prioritising hooks and fun over dark atmospherics. It’s a nostalgic sound which never comes off as pastiche.

Early releases like “Paris Is Gone” and “Johnny” first gained them attention in their home country, followed by latest EP Empty Words last year, their career-best work.

A breakout few years has included an international debut at SXSW Austin, a spot on the NME 100, a performance at Melbourne Fashion Festival, a support slot for The Killers, and a nomination for Best Independent Punk Album or EP at the 2024 AIR Awards. Just don’t ask them to cover Usher again anytime soon… —Conor Lochrie

REDD. is moving like an artist who knows exactly how fast things are changing around them.

The Melbourne artist has gone from underground favourite to industry radar mainstay in the space of a breakout year, racking up more than 2.2 million global streams, building a fiercely loyal online community, and landing major gaming syncs across titles including Skate and NHL, and most recently the US TV Series Off Campus.

National tours alongside Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers and glaive have only strengthened the case, proving REDD.’s live show can hit just as hard as the records.

Their 2025 mixtape RAUNCH. made that range impossible to ignore. Recorded across Melbourne, Sydney, Los Angeles, and New York, the project swerves between pop-punk, indie-R&B, hip-hop, and blown-out party music, held together by REDD.’s elastic vocal instincts and razor-edged lyricism.

Recent single “Juliet” found them joining forces with Brisbane’s ixaras for a sugar-rush collaboration that feels like a late-night joyride with your new crush.

Playful, loud, and built on restless momentum, it’s REDD. at a thrilling point in their rise: still raw around the edges, but already moving like one of Australia’s most versatile young voices. —Jade Kennedy

Aotearoa hip-hop isn’t struggling for top talent right now, from Melodownz still dropping the bangers to MOKOMOKAI impressing on Australian stages and Brandn Shiraz gaining notice through his Caru collab, so it’s even more impressive that RNZŌ is standing out from the pack.

The youngest performer at Laneway 2025 previously featured in our Up-And-Coming Aotearoa Artists series, which came ahead of the drop of his debut full-length album, RNZŌ SZN.

RNZŌ’s 2025 record received rave reviews from RNZ, Sniffers, and us thanks to the rapper’s bubbly personality and playful bars. What was especially notable about this debut was the level of co-signs: Church, AP, Deadforest, and Dera Meelan recognise a special talent when they hear one.

The future is very bright for this prodigious rapper. Aotearoa hip-hop has a superstar in the making. —Conor Lochrie

Shady Nasty are the kind of band people struggle to describe, which is usually a good sign.

The Sydney trio — Kevin Stathis, Haydn Green, and Luca Watson — have carved out their own strange, serrated corner of Australian music, pulling punk, hip-hop, post-punk, and experimental sounds into something that feels both street-level and fully world-built. Their music is abrasive, funny, oddly beautiful, and unmistakably theirs.

Their debut album, TREK, arrived in February with production from The Presets’ Kim Moyes, who described the band as occupying a “unique place in Sydney” and praised their “uncompromising pursuit of individuality.” It’s a fitting summary for a group whose songs can feel like sketches from a cracked-open city: vivid, uneasy, poetic, and alive with weird detail.

That singularity has started travelling well beyond Australia. After touring TREK and supporting English band Shame in Sydney, Shady Nasty caught the ear of Fred again.., who played their track “SCREWDRIVA” to thousands of viewers on Twitch and called them “literally my favourite band in the world right now.”

His praise was not casual, either. Fred compared frontman Stathis’ writing to what he loved about The Streets’ Mike Skinner, calling the album “unbelievably beautiful” and singling out the way Stathis’ lines can feel like entire stories.

That co-sign soon turned into collaboration. Shady Nasty teamed up with Fred again.. and Irish producer KETTAMA on “Air Maxes”, a release that pairs the trio’s ambient, gentle original with a pulsating KETTAMA remix. They later reunited with both artists for “HARDSTYLE 2”, part of Fred again..’s acclaimed USB series.

For a band built on refusal — refusal to smooth the edges, refusal to fit neatly into genre, refusal to sound like anyone else — Shady Nasty’s rising international profile feels especially satisfying. —Jade Kennedy

Things can change quickly in music — and often for the better.

As a straightforward alt-pop artist on a major label, Theia felt completely lost in her career, her true artistry diminished.

After going independent around the turn of the 2020s, surrounding herself with a “beautiful female team,” as she told us last year, Theia finally delivered the debut album of her dreams.

Girl, in a Savage World is big, bold, and one of the most overtly political albums in recent Aotearoa music. “I’m so proud that I trusted my gut and my vision, because I know it was a wacky freaking vibe!” she told us.

She still knows how to craft a delicious alt-pop gem, but Theia’s debut album is more powered by fierce punk spirit, indie musicianship, and folksy ballads.

Girl, in a Savage World arrived during a time when New Zealand’s current conservative government is increasingly attempting to push back on Māori rights. Now based in Los Angeles, where she’s found a supportive community of fellow Indigenous people, she had to watch from afar as events like last year’s Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti happened in her homeland.

“I just threw everything away and started afresh when that new government came into power, and [I] was just filled with fury and passion,” she said.

That’s why the lyrics on her debut album are so in-your-face and incendiary.

2025 was one for the books for There’s a Tuesday.

The Ōtautahi Christchurch-born indie-pop band were selected for a prestigious Seoul residency, which led to them spending 10 days recording at professional studios and collaborating with local musicians. They also stopped by Australia for a headline show and BIGSOUND showcases.

There’s a Tuesday also found time to drop their second album. According to the Asia New Zealand Foundation, they stood out thanks to their dreamy sound and thoughtful approach to songwriting, and both of these things are on full display in Blush.

They flit between polished indie-pop gems and rawer, rockier moments, making for a record that is winning them many more overseas fans.

Ōtautahi’s music scene has been in a good place for a few years now, thanks in no small part to an ambitious band like There’s a Tuesday calling the city home. More global stages now beckon for the four-piece. —Conor Lochrie

In a music world filled with factory-produced, identical music stars, we’re lucky to have an artist as idiosyncratic as Vera Ellen.

Not every artist, for example, would casually drop a song like the alluring and absurd “gayfever” as the lead single from their new album, but Ellen has made a habit of proudly forging their own path through the music industry.

If 2021’s It’s Your Birthday hinted at much to come, and 2021’s Taite Music Prize-winning Ideal Home Noise confirmed her songwriting talent, new album Heaven Knows What Time is the assured and complete record Ellen’s been building towards for half a decade.

Born out of a period of “unconventionality” for the Aotearoa musician, during which she learned to “embrace the chaos that comes with being a self-sustained artist in today’s constantly driving culture,” Heaven Knows What Time contains some of Ellen’s most thoughtful songwriting to date.

Whether she’s pondering raw, all-consuming infatuation (“gayfever”) or exploring artifice in the entertainment industry (“walking in vegas”), Ellen is always her authentic self in the tracks.

Already a Taite Music Prize winner in 2024, expect her to be in with another chance of winning next year. —Conor Lochrie

MJ Lenderman. Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield. Djo. Elton bloody John. All these musicians — and a hell of a lot of indie music fans in Australia and beyond — have quickly fallen in love with the throwback sound of Way Dynamic.

Dylan Young’s timeless project recalls songwriting stalwarts like Brian Wilson or Neil Young, updating classic ’60s and ’70s pop, folk, and soft-rock for modern audiences.

Young’s latest Way Dynamic album, Massive Shoe, broke out in a big way last year, deservedly earning a spot in the top 5 of our year-end Australian albums list.

Bright, blossoming tracks like “People Settle Down”, “Miffed It”, and “In Review” perform a similar magic track to The Lemon Twigs’ bewitching discography: sounding winsomely retro without ever dissolving into cheap nostalgia. Just like The Lemon Twigs, Dylan Young is much too talented for that. —Conor Lochrie