I live to anticipate so naturally the first episode of Bandsplain in 2026 involves me and my brilliant guest Shaad D’Souza of the wonderful Shaad Magazine anticipating new albums that will come out this year. I forgot a few because (Hoobastank voice) I’m not a perfect person, like for the example the alleged new Strokes album that is allegedly coming out this summer, allegedly produced by Rick Rubin. Can’t say anticipation is the right word for that record for me personally (it’s giving mortgage payments remain due, allegedly) but I will endeavor to keep my heart open.
Aside from all the anticipating, I’ve also been spending more time spelunking through the digital world in pursuit of new and interesting music to listen to, beyond the bubble of my own nostalgia, laziness, and most crucially, algorithm (inspired majorly by Hanif Abdurraqib, as always). In my recent interview with Kevin Lee Kharas of Real Lies, he spoke about really surrendering to doom scrolling to the point that it almost transcends into something else entirely, maybe something spiritual? I’ve yet to try that (too mentally fragile) but sometimes when I’m in hour three of engaging in my music discovery practices I can sort of understand what he means. Chris Ryan and I spoke a bit about how to do this but I’ll expand some here, in case some of you, like me, would like to be delighted and thrilled again by off-roading the internet in search of music that lights you up in 2026. What lies beyond anticipation?
I’ll weave in a round-up of music I’ve found through these various methodologies in the past month or so for funsies.
Real quick though: I recently appeared on an episode of Huw Stephens’ Roundtable show on 6 Music (the BBC!!! I got to see the newsroom and everything) which was extremely major for me. I don’t think they will post it (is it because I cheerily spoke about wishing I still did ecstasy live on the radio? We will never know) but I wanted to mention the few artists I discovered through appearing on the show: first my co-guest Etienne Quartey-Papafio’s band Whitelands, which is a lovely shoegazey dream-pop type outfit, as well as Joshua Burnside, a Northern Irish singer-songwriter whose latest single “Something Else” just ruined me, and lastly British singer Ellur, whose voice is very fucking cool and whose newest single “Dream of Mine” has been looping in my head for a full week.
Anyway here’s how I find new music:
One of my favorite methods, and the one I consider (maybe delulu) to be closest to the glory days of yore, is seeing what other bands or artists your favs hang out with. And by hang out I mean: follow on IG (yes here I am condoning lurking), have played shows with or toured with in the past, or shout out in interviews. Some artists these days do something I love which is post playlists to their artist profiles on Spotify, and those are rich texts in terms of finding things you’ve probably never heard of. Real Lies has a few of these. Wednesday has one. Water From Your Eyes too. This is basically akin to reading the liner notes of the CD to see what other bands they thank, in my estimation except the Russian nesting dolls aspect of it all makes it feel infinite in the best way possible. Like when you were thirteen and 96% of the world was unknown to you and you felt that in the best, most hopeful, and dare I say, anticipatory, way possible.
I think I probably found Way Dynamic through Cameron Winter related artists (leave me alone) but this song “Miffed It” is very good. He is Australian but that is OKAY.
I mentioned this in the past but prowling Real Lies’ IG follow list is how I found innerinnerlife, an artist I truly love.
Literally no clue what series of curious clicks led me to Danish band Horse Vision, but they’re fucking rad. Might have been through Sex Week’s related artists. (I also heavily fw Sex Week). What are they putting in the frikadeller in Copenhagen??? (Also does every guy in town look like them jw). This song!
Anyway they have their own playlist on their page, through which I found this beautiful song by an artist called Threshold that I like very much.
And then I went to Threshold’s related artists and found Angel Investor (amazing name) and this song called “Delusions Are So Beautiful” (Yasi-core). I could go on and on and on (and I will, in private).
This one is obvious and I basically just said it above, but I wonder if a lot of people are really getting in the fucking trenches here because there’s a lot of gold to be mined: Related artists on Spotify (or whatever platform you use). Because man this will take you down some rabbit holes that eventually lead you to a shoegaze band with like 418 listeners who hasn’t put anything out since 2017 and is wonderful.
This is stolen valor: It was Chris Ryan who found the band and they’re called See Through Dresses and this song “Lucy’s Arm” is gorge. Which leads me to:
Your literal actual friends whom you love and respect. I’ve been told by a few Bandsplain listeners that within their friend groups they maintain either a shared playlist where they all dump in songs they love as they come across them, or one person is the John Peel of the bunch and sends out a monthly playlist to everyone (me in all group projects circa middle school). I was going to say I don’t do this but actually I do, it’s right here (freshie for 2026) and you are all my beloved parasocial friends.
Speaking of parasocial friends - follow music writers whose taste you admire on the various platforms they post to, such as Shaad or Walden Green or Steven Hyden or brittany spanos etc. Same goes for the smaller music publications still out here posting through it. I’ve been put on to some great music through The Line of Best Fit, for example.
Recently through The Line of Best Fit I was put on to this song by supermodel*. I love it!
I don’t really have a fifth one but I also do not like even numbers (a weird tic) so I’ll use this bullet point to remind you of allmusic.com where the related artists tab is broken up into “similar to” “influenced by” “followed by” and “associated with” which can sometimes yield some fun discovery. If you really want to get freaky though I invite you to start looking up producers or mixers or engineers on albums you love and then navigating over to their credits pages. Harder than the almost always fruitful click-click through Spotify related artists but maybe we should be removing friction wherever possible to regain our psychic strength and experience richer pay-off? Worth a shot.
See you next week xx
All the songs mentioned in this letter live in this playlist.
I used to find new and new to me music from reading The Big Takeover. It was so fun to go to the Tower Records in Torrance, buy the new issue, and scour through the imports section to see what I could find. Nowadays, I find my new music on Bandcamp!