Best New Artists Archives - Stereogum

The 40 Best New Artists Of 2025

Stereogum — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 15:20:27 +0000

What do Tame Impala, Haim, Chance The Rapper, and Addison Rae all have in common? Though they're arguably superstars now, in the past they were all featured among Stereogum's annual roundups of the year's Best New Artists (fka Best New Bands). We don't claim to have any clairvoyant skills around here. We just have good taste. And with the end of the year fast approaching, it's now time for us to tell you the Best New Artists Of 2025.

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The 40 Best New Artists Of 2024

Stereogum — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:30:19 +0000

We finally did it. After 14 years of telling you the definitive "Best New Bands" of the preceding 12 months, Stereogum has evolved. Today, it is my unique honor to present the first edition of our Best New Artists list. It is exactly the same thing as the Best New Bands lists you know and love, just with a more accurate title.

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The 40 Best New Bands Of 2023

Stereogum — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 15:00:32 +0000

Hello and welcome to the 13th edition of Stereogum's annual Best New Bands list. Lucky number 13! We started doing this back in 2010, and every year since then -- except for 2014, which we skipped (sorry to any band that really hit it big in 2014) -- our writers have taken stock of the past twelve months to spotlight the artists that have us excited about the future of music in any genre. It's a fun task, and also an overwhelming one, because there are so many bands. And so many of them are good! So many of them are bad, too, but you won't find those here.

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The 40 Best New Bands Of 2022

Stereogum — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 14:00:35 +0000

Every year for more than a decade now, we here at Stereogum have put our collective heads together to compile a list of artists that make us excited about where music is going. There is more music out there than ever, and the amount of it that's made by newer artists is exciting, and it continues to be invigorating and overwhelming to sift through all of that for our loyal readers (and the not-so-loyal ones, too -- welcome).

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The 40 Best New Bands Of 2021

Stereogum — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 14:00:17 +0000

Only in the past few months has seeing shows become a viable option once again. Thus, just like last year, it's been difficult to figure out which new artists hold up on the road, or which ones have such a spectacular live show that it forces you to reconsider their recorded output. But we here at Stereogum are still as determined as ever to compile our annual Best New Bands list, in order to provide a look at the musicians that make us most excited about the future and organize them all in one place.

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The 40 Best New Bands Of 2020

Stereogum — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 14:05:11 +0000

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.

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The 40 Best New Bands Of 2019

Stereogum — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 15:30:38 +0000

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!)

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Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands Of 2018

Stereogum — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 14:02:55 +0000

This fall, an artist found her voice. In A Star Is Born, Ally Campana goes from unknown to sensation in under a year. The movie is unrealistic wish fulfillment, but her upward trajectory embodies our hope for all artists, at least on a smaller scale: to become popular enough to follow their muse without sacrificing their integrity, to provide us with music that has a lasting impact. The narrative of the film is, of course, messy and more tragic, but perhaps in some alternate timeline ALLY would have made our list of the Best New Bands Of 2018. (Or not, if her debut was more "Why Did You Do That?" and less "Always Remember Us This Way.")

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Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands Of 2017

Stereogum — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 16:00:51 +0000

For a music fan, few experiences rival listening to a new artist and recognizing their potential for greatness -- or, in some special cases, witnessing someone capture that magic completely the first time around. We at Stereogum aim to be ahead of the curve -- it's our job! -- and every fall we highlight the new artists we're most excited about in our Best New Bands list. This list acts as both recognition for musicians that have thrived in the past 12 months and as an investment in them for the future. We expect that the 40 artists below will continue to provide us with great new music for a long time to come.

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Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands Of 2016

Stereogum — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 16:00:23 +0000

We listen to a lot of music here at Stereogum -- it's sort of our job! -- and every year, we attempt to codify all of that listening through lists that take stock of what's kept us engaged throughout. There are still a few weeks until the hectic year-end list season descends, but we've made it something of a tradition to highlight new sounds that have us excited about the future of music through our annual Best New Bands list.

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Stereogum’s 50 Best New Bands Of 2015

Stereogum — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 14:00:06 +0000

Stereogum's Best New Bands list is back! After taking off last year, today we return with a rundown of the artists that have spent the past year getting us excited about the future of music.

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Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands Of 2013

Stereogum — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 14:07:01 +0000

It's that time of year again: Time to take stock of the vast armies of new musicians making music in the past year, and to pick out a few dozen of the best and brightest. In the three previous annual versions of this column, we've hailed the arrivals of Frank Ocean, Tame Impala, A$AP Rocky, Grimes, Savages, Best Coast, Zola Jesus, HAIM, DIIV, and a host of others. Some have gone on to greatness, and others have slipped away into obscurity, but they've all deserved a few minutes of your attention. And that's also the case with this year's list, which makes room for frantic art-rappers, rickety DIY punk bands, slickly synthy festival-beaters, grimy art-noise warehouse-annihilators, and, um, Diarrhea Planet.

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Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands Of 2012

Stereogum — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 18:05:11 +0000

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to select the rising bands which have connected them, someone wrote a long time ago. Or, something close to that. Here’s what we’re getting down to: It’s that time of year when Stereogum’s staff selects the 40 most exciting new* acts of…

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Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands of 2011

Stereogum — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:26:51 +0000

Last year, right around the time summer turned to fall, we at Stereogum published our list of the 40 best new bands of the year. The idea of a “new” band is a pretty nebulous one, since many of the kids we listed were probably planning out their musical ventures in their basements since they…

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Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands Of 2010

Scott Lapatine — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:29:56 +0000

With fall on the horizon, we're escaping a slow summer and shifting into that final, fertile phase of the music year's release cycle. Which makes it a ripe time to get some perspective on the year, in terms of the big records from past favorites, and here, the bands that have introduced themselves as new ones. Recently, NME conducted its own exercise in surveying the "new" crop of bands, turning in a list that rankled some of you, because you felt some bands were "old," or because some bands were not to your liking, or because it was a list. The subjectivity of what makes a band the best at anything is of course primary grounds for debate; what makes a band the best at being "new" gives the argument more dimension. We found ourselves arguing and emailing about our own picks, and rules, and said fuck it: let's publish this.

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