The 40 Best New Bands Of 2020
In a year when it’s largely been impossible to see live music, a major source of discovering new artists has been eliminated. But music finds a way and plenty of acts have emerged over the last 12 months. Every autumn here at Stereogum, we look at the artists that make us most excited about the future of music and organize them into our annual Best New Bands list, in order to celebrate what they’ve already accomplished and highlight them as someone to keep an eye on moving forward.
There are, as always, some caveats: “New” is a subjective term. Some of these artists have been around for a while; others only have a handful of songs to their name. But all of them are doing something worth hearing right now. We also stubbornly continue to call this the Best New Bands list, even though there are many not-bands on the list. Deal with it!
We purposefully run this list removed from year-end list season to give these up-and-comers the spotlight they deserve. And we also keep in mind that an artist’s trajectory can’t be tied to a single 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 new music posts and Band To Watch column. If you revisit our lists from years past, you’ll see that we have a good track record with this stuff. So get familiar with Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands Of 2020, presented below in alphabetical order. You can also listen to a playlist of our picks on Spotify. Enjoy! –James Rettig
2nd Grade
LOCATION: Philadelphia, PA
Peter Gill may be to earnest East Coast indie-pop what Robert Pollard is to art-damaged Midwest barroom rock. On their album Hit To Hit — a facetious title, but a spiritually correct one — Gill’s band 2nd Grade cycle through styles and fidelities with a casual command of them all. Over 24 short, sweet tracks, he tackles quotidian concerns like tax forms and small pleasures like riding a bike, ending up with a charming patchwork vision of poppy underground rock. Whether he can keep up with Guided By Voices’ insane pace remains to be seen, but he’s off to a good start. –Chris DeVille
42 Dugg
LOCATION: Detroit, MI
This summer, 42 Dugg had a top-10 single while on the run from the law. The situation wasn’t that serious; Dugg eventually turned himself in after speeding away from a traffic stop. But it says something about the speed and immediacy of the man’s rise. 42 Dugg raps in a throaty crackle, combining the raw adrenaline of the Detroit underground with the melodic drift of his friend and collaborator Lil Baby. “We Paid,” 42 Dugg and Lil Baby’s big summer hit, is also one of 2020’s most hypnotic anthems. –Tom Breihan
645AR
LOCATION: The Bronx, NY
645AR’s helium mumble is a gimmick, but it’s a gimmick that might have legs. If Future and Young Thug’s distinctively digital voices can become chart staples, it’s possible with just the right collaboration that 645AR could find himself there as well. On his own, he’s plenty compelling, his Adult Swim-adjacent cartoonish vape haze giving way to an odd vulnerability that transcends language. His team-up with FKA Twigs is the best example so far of his potential as a foil to a more traditional pop star. –James
Anjimile
LOCATION: Boston, MA
Anjimile Chithambo often writes with a hushed reverence, like Tracy Chapman attempting Sufjan Stevens songs and ending up with something startlingly unique. But the singer-songwriter’s debut album Giver Taker is a brighter, busier collection than that comparison initially suggests. Anjimile just as often conjures skewed indie-pop visionaries like Islands’ Nick Thorburn or Glass Beach’s J. McClendon. “Have you ever seen anything quite like this?” he asks on “Maker.” “Have you ever known anything quite like this?” Blessedly, we have now. –Chris
Armani Caesar
LOCATION: Buffalo, NY
The Griselda Records knucklehead squadron has carved out a place on the rap landscape by keeping things as grimy and ugly as possible. But though she shares a hometown with her new Griselda labelmates, Armani Caesar doesn’t really have the same sensibility. She’s as tough as any of them, but she’s icy and imperious and glamorous, too. She’s also got the skills and personality to cut right through a neck-snapping DJ Premier beat like it was nothing. –Tom
Bacchae
LOCATION: Washington, DC
You could argue that Washington, DC has the most historically significant punk rock scene in the world, and Bacchae have plenty of links to that lineage. (Jawbox’s J. Robbins, for instance, produced the band’s debut album Pleasure Vision.) Bacchae have all the fury and toughness and determination of their forebears. But Bacchae also have whizzing new-wave synths and sticky hooks and warm, empathetic melodic sweetness working for them. They’re a whole new chapter in a great book. –Tom
Backxwash
LOCATION: Montreal, Québec
Backxwash’s music is paranoid, skittish, and all-consuming. Her now Polaris Prize-winning album God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It is an immense accomplishment — her liberal use of metal samples and general kvlt attitude are a refreshingly new texture in the rap landscape. One only has to listen to her lock into a beat on something like “Spells” to hear how assured Backxwash already sounds and how far she can go from here. –James
Barely Civil
LOCATION: Milwaukee, WI
Their new album is called I’ll Figure This Out, and honestly it sounds like Barely Civil already have. The Wisconsin band leveled up impressively on their second LP, which plows into the darkly anthemic airspace between emo revival titans like Foxing and You Blew It! and the downcast indie grandeur of Frightened Rabbit and Death Cab For Cutie. The resulting guitar bombast sounds like a bleak Upper Midwest winter at its most cinematic. –Chris
Bartees Strange
LOCATION: Washington, DC
Bartees Strange takes clear inspiration from indie rock majesty — covering the National, quoting the Antlers — but he approaches it from a whole different angle, delivering it from a perspective of Black desperation and catharsis. Strange’s music is a dizzy blur of genres, punk and rap and folk and emo, and his voice is a fervent, charged bleat. Up until recently, Strange worked as an environmental lobbyist in DC, and he sings like someone who knows the world is ending. Nobody sounds like him, and nobody could. –Tom
beabadoobee
LOCATION: London, UK
beabadoobee is the latest Gen Z success story forged in the viral flames of TikTok. But her sound is decidedly more retro than that hyper-contemporary origin story might suggest, Trojan-horsing gleaming modern pop hooks into the thrifted flannel of ’90s indie and alt-rock. On her last EP, she memorably wished that she was Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus. On her new debut album Fake It Flowers, she’s already turned that secondhand aesthetic into a distinct identity all her own. –Peter Helman
Bfb Da Packman
LOCATION: Houston, TX
Houston-based Bfb Da Packman hails from Flint, not far from Detroit’s flourishing scene. He raps with a chaotic energy comparable to his “Free Joe Exotic” collaborator Sada Baby, spraying outrageous punchlines with a gleeful, cartoonish snarl over beats so hard and trashy. But when not complaining about coronavirus messing up the drug trade or clowning himself for premature ejaculation, Bfb sometimes gets serious too: “My daddy mad I said he smoke crack in one of my songs/ Man I don’t give a fuck, you let another n*gga raise your son.” –Chris
Big Cheese
LOCATION: Leeds, UK
This band just rips. Hardcore bruisers Big Cheese are firmly entrenched in the resurgent UK hardcore scene, and some of the members in the band also play in up-and-coming melodic stompers Higher Power. But Big Cheese don’t sound like part of any present-day movement. Instead, they sound like circa-1986 New York pit bullies. Big Cheese’s unrelenting 19-minute debut album Punishment Park has all the face-mash bounce of prime Cro-Mags, and frontman Razor Hardwick sounds exactly the way you’d hope a guy named Razor Hardwick would sound. –Tom
Black Country, New Road
LOCATION: London, UK
Black Country, New Road come from the same Speedy Wunderground scene that gave rise to other young British bands like Black Midi and Squid, mercurial artists bending the confines of post-punk into strange and exciting new shapes. They still only have a few songs to their name, but like Black Midi, their chaotic live shows have become their calling card. With a seven-piece lineup that boasts a saxophonist and a violinist, their discursively free-wheeling compositions usher post-rock, noise-rock, and free-jazz down a road well worth traveling. –Peter