Hello there, and welcome to “roughly halfway through the year 2026”. Below, you’ll find forty records that RO loved more than anything else so far this year. As always, there’s a bunch of good music I wasn’t able to fit on here (check the site directory for other records we’ve written about recently), but I’m quite happy with this list. I think you will be, too!
The list is unranked, ordered alphabetically by artist name (last year I did it reverse-alphabetically, and I alternate it every year).
Thanks for reading, and here are links to stream a playlist of these selections via Spotify (missing one album) and Tidal (Bandcamp links are provided for all records).
Check back tomorrow for part 2!
Ace of Spit – Ace of Spit II
Release date: January 3rd
Record label: Sinkhole/Wombat Cock
Genre: Garage rock, punk rock, surf rock
Formats: Vinyl, digital
I first heard about St. Louis garage rockers Ace of Spit in 2022 thanks to their Sophomore Lounge-released self-titled debut album, a wild punk rock LP that sucked up and spat out surf rock, proto-punk, and even a bit of power pop on us all. Four years later, we have Ace of Spit II, which if anything is an even greater commitment to the twin tornadoes of freewheeling garage punk and “spaghetti western” vibes; the quartet spend almost all of II‘s twenty-seven minutes prowling the fabled “Cramps to MC5” spectrum. (Read more)
Avery Island BCE – Dom Pump
Release date: April 20th
Record label: Tough Gum
Genre: Art rock, math rock, prog-pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Avery Legendre has played in the New Orleans underground groups STEEF, Jess Joy, and Butte over the past few years; her first solo album under the name Avery Island BCE, Dom Pump, reveals an interesting and (in her label’s own words) “hard to pin down” art rock project. Dom Pump is less wedded to “punk rock” than Legendre’s past bands–in fact, I’d go as far as to say that it’s hardly a punk record at all. Dom Pump feels larger than its nine tracks and thirty minutes–half the songs feel like mini-epics, and even the relative respites work as standalone pieces. (Read more)
Bellows – “Que Bello!”
Release date: June 12th
Record label: Bloody Knuckles
Genre: Art pop, synthpop, indie pop, folk-pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Arriving four years after the technicolor, multi-layered death rumination of Next of Kin, Bellows’ latest album once again lands on the maximalist side of indie pop. The hour-long double LP “Que Bello!” puts the Brooklyn project’s intricacies on an even larger canvas; it is indeed a lot to take in, but the pop music and deliberate layers of sound that’ve characterized Bellows’ music in the past carry us across these eighteen songs deftly. “Que Bello!” continues to hold court in frontperson Oliver Kalb’s unique niche of soft rock, 2010s Brooklyn indie pop/twee-folk, and synth-y, glitzy pop–it sounds like a Bellows album, a concept that’s as nebulous and intriguing as it’s ever been. (Read more)
The Blackburns – Alternative Rock
Release date: April 24th
Record label: Sell the Heart
Genre: Power pop, college rock, Alternative Rock
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
A couple of very good singles last year indicated that The Blackburns were ready to level up, and their sophomore album delivers on that promise. It’s called Alternative Rock, and that’s what we get: post-Paul Westerberg guitar pop hooks with Weezer guitars, Rentals keyboards, and a Fountains of Wayne outlook on life. Everything on Alternative Rock is written like it could be the focal point of the entire album, and The Blackburns are rewarded for their ambition with a transcendent record that juggles nostalgia and pastiche and develops its own style in defiance of all of that. (Read more)
Cape Crush – Place Memory
Release date: May 1st
Record label: Wanna Hear It
Genre: Emo-punk, power pop, pop punk
Formats: Vinyl, digital
A self-described “power-emo” band from Massachusetts, the quartet Cape Crush first showed up in 2023 with an EP called San Souci, and they released a split record with the bands Impossible Dog and Good June early last year. Place Memory is the group’s first full-length album, a strong and confident debut of emo-tinged power pop and pop punk songwriting. Place Memory is buoyed with archetypal emo-power-pop anthems carried by instantly-engrossing performances from frontperson Ali Lipman, and the meat of the album indicates that Cape Crush came more than ready to fill an album’s worth of space with their ideas. (Read more)
The Chop – Third Window
Release date: April 24th
Record label: Lost Sound Tapes
Genre: Post-punk, indie pop, minimalism
Formats: Cassette, digital
Gemma Fleet and Andrew Doig have put out a lot of music in recent years as one half of Dancer, and they debuted a new project called The Chop just last year. Third Window, a six-song “mini-album” coming less than a year after The Chop’s debut LP, continues the duo’s journey into more subdued indie pop; combine the brief length, the sparse arrangements, and the creators’ ever-expanding discography, and you’ve got a recipe for a record destined to be “unfairly overlooked”. Personal disorientation and uncertainty shade these half dozen-songs (Doig’s recent health issues having perhaps altered his relationship to music), but Third Window is a particularly strong document of The Chop’s present. (Read more)
Cootie Catcher – Something We All Got
Release date: February 27th
Record label: Carpark
Genre: Indie pop, twee, experimental pop, electronica, power pop
Formats: Vinyl, CD, cassette, digital
The electronic-twee pop of Shy at First ended up being an unlikely breakout record for Montreal quartet Cootie Catcher last year; they were subsequently picked up by Carpark Records, and a new LP has arrived less than a year after the last. On Something We All Got, Cootie Catcher have clearly “gone for it”; armed with a label with a larger reach and (presumably) more resources than before, the band have polished the stranger, “out-there” side of their sound away and honed in on making big-hook, excitable indie pop songs. Any worry that the band may have inadvertently sanded off their strong suits is laid to rest with a parade of monster guitar pop tracks. (Read more)
Crooked Fingers – Swet Deth
Release date: February 27th
Record label: Merge
Genre: Folk rock, chamber rock, art rock, singer-songwriter
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Crooked Fingers was Eric Bachmann’s second act–after the dissolution of the North Carolina musician’s tight, noisy, intense 90s indie rock quartet Archers of Loaf, he reinvented himself as a more folk rock/AM radio-esque frontperson with a loose and revolving cast of backing musicians. The first Crooked Fingers album since 2011 came about in an organic fashion–while attempting to make another solo album, Bachmann found himself with a bunch of songs that “belonged to a larger space”. So, he pulled together a few collaborators and Swet Deth, a collection of songs about mortality inspired by the morbid but vibrant cover (drawn by Bachmann’s son in school), was born. (Read more)
Wendy Eisenberg – Wendy Eisenberg
Release date: April 3rd
Record label: Joyful Noise
Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter, art pop, jazz-pop, alt-country
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
Wendy Eisenberg has been quite busy in recent years between their groups Editrix, Squanderers, and performing as part of Bill Orcutt’s Guitar Quartet, but it’s still been a minute since we’d gotten a song-based Eisenberg solo album. Enter Wendy Eisenberg, an album of self-proclaimed “folk songs” made by someone whose definition of practitioners of the form includes Michael Hurley, John Prine, and Willie Nelson but also Van Dyke Parks, Richard Dawson, and the Mekons. Eisenberg and their collaborators have created a record that combines the conversational, wandering jazz-ish folk stylings of Eisenberg’s past solo work with ornate, string-laden country-folk backdrops. (Read more)
Fake Canadian – Fellow Traveler
Release date: March 6th
Record label: Daylight Headlight Section
Genre: Pop punk, power pop, post-punk, new wave, 90s indie rock
Formats: Digital
Fake Canadian began in San Jose late last decade as the solo project of one Christopher Casuga, eventually turning into a Sacramento-based trio dealing in bratty, nasally power-pop-punk, Devo-y nerve-y post-punk/new wave, and 90s-inspired underground indie rock. The second Fake Canadian album and first as a full-on band is called Fellow Traveler, and it’s large enough to contain several more hits from the self-described “angular power pop” band as well as push some of their (already fairly loose) boundaries. As always, Fake Canadian remain on the more ornery side of whatever they’re doing. (Read more)
Fazed on a Pony – Swan
Release date: January 23rd
Record label: Meritorio/Melted Ice Cream
Genre: Folk rock, alt-country, indie pop
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Swan is catchy and, at times, jangly enough to fit on the two esteemed guitar pop record labels that are co-releasing it, and Fazed on a Pony frontperson Peter McCall works to combine that side of his sound with folk-y indie rock and whatever the New Zealand version of “Americana” is on this album. The alt-country influence is incorporated tastefully and reverently, but I think it makes the most sense to approach Swan as an indie pop album first and foremost. McCall might’ve chosen a different way of going about making guitar pop than many of his Kiwi peers, but that doesn’t mean Fazed on a Pony isn’t partaking in a rich tradition on Swan nonetheless. (Read more)
The Fragiles – Sing the Heat of the Sun
Release date: January 9th
Record label: Living Lost
Genre: Jangle pop, lo-fi indie rock, psychedelic pop, dream pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
Philadelphia musician David Settle ruled the realms of lo-fi indie rock in 2020 and 2021, putting out a slew of albums via his aliases The Fragiles, Big Heet, and Psychic Flowers. After a few years off, Settle kicked off 2026 with the first album from The Fragiles in five years. While Big Heet deals in noisy post-punk and Psychic Flowers in shit-fi fuzz pop, The Fragiles has always been where Settle explores dreamier, almost psychedelic indie-gaze, and Sing the Heat of the Sun offers a strong collection of such material. With a capable band now behind him, Settle is able to give the songs of Sing the Heat of the Sun delicate but forceful readings. (Read more)
Friends of Cesar Romero – Soul Scouts / Songs the Siren Sing
Release date: February 6th / March 19th
Record label: Doomed Babe/Kit Fox
Genre: Garage rock, punk rock, power pop
Formats: Digital
John Waylon Miller, AKA J. Waylon Porcupine, passed away suddenly on April 2nd of this year. Shortly before his untimely death, the South Dakota power pop/garage rocker had announced his retirement from rock and roll for the “fourth time”; I was still holding out hope he’d reconsider, but at least his Friends of Cesar Romero project was prolific right up until the end, releasing three albums in the first three months of 2026. February’s Soul Scouts was one of my favorite Friends of Cesar Romero records in a long time with its blistering, ripping basement garage punk attitude–for some reason, that one’s been removed from streaming and there’s only one song from it on Bandcamp, but I wanted to include it here because it deserves to not be forgotten and hopefully somebody associated with the project can make it publicly available again someday. Songs the Siren Sing, the final Friends of Cesaro Romero record, is available for you to hear in full, though, and that album is a more than worthy send-off to an underappreciated, brilliant artist I was lucky enough to cover on Rosy Overdrive many times. (Read more)
Gentle Brontosaurus – Three Hares
Release date: February 13th
Record label: Self-released
Genre: Indie pop, power pop, twee pop, chamber pop, jangle pop
Formats: CD, digital
Three Hares is Gentle Brontosaurus’ third album and first one since 2018; those of you who have enjoyed primary frontperson Huan-Hua Chye’s clever, catchy indie pop songwriting in her blog mainstay Miscellaneous Owl project will find plenty of it here. I’ve gotten used to Chye’s albums being scattershot collections of wide-ranging songs both thematically and musically; Gentle Brontosaurus is different, and both Chye’s writing and the band’s playing make conscious efforts to cohere. The five-piece band setup (featuring two other lead vocalists, even) adds a lot to the music, allowing Gentle Brontosaurus to explore bouncy power pop and Midwestern college rock, among other genres. (Read more)
Doug Gillard – Parallel Stride
Release date: April 24th
Record label: Dromedary
Genre: Power pop, college rock, psychedelic pop, Guided by Voices
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
With Guided by Voices’ touring schedule finally slowing down, GBV sideman Doug Gillard apparently had time to return to solo act mode. Gillard is a much more low-key vocalist than his longtime collaborator Robert Pollard; maybe he sounds like somebody who’s more used to the sideman role than the spotlight, but it’s the right tone for the subtle, workmanlike beauty of Parallel Stride. The fourth Gillard solo album is unmistakably him, a strong collection of songs that emphasize his pop songwriting, art rock fluency, and, of course, renowned guitar playing. (Read more)
Joe Glass – Snakewards
Release date: January 3rd
Record label: Hallogallo
Genre: Power pop, jangle pop, lo-fi pop, mod revival
Formats: Cassette, digital
The Rockford-originating, Chicago-based musician Joe Glass has been playing bass guitar in the live version of Kai Slater’s acclaimed mod revival/power pop project Sharp Pins as of late, but he’s a singer-songwriter in his own right as well, releasing a collection of lo-fi, psychedelic guitar pop called Slither in 2022. His second solo album, Snakewards, is perhaps the result of playing in what is by all accounts a very tight live trio in Sharp Pins; Glass has landed himself directly in the world of brisk, mid-fi, early Guided by Voices-evoking power pop that Slater has also been pursuing. Thirty-one minutes never went so fast. (Read more)
Guided by Voices – Crawlspace of the Pantheon
Release date: May 29th
Record label: GBV, Inc.
Genre: 90s indie rock, post-punk, power pop, college rock, Guided by Voices
Formats: Vinyl, digital
Considering that there’ve been periods of my life where I’ve listened exclusively to Guided by Voices and Robert Pollard’s assortment of side projects, Rosy Overdrive giving a thumbs up to GBV LP number 44, Crawlspace of the Pantheon, was probably very foreseeable. Discounting the actually incredible debut LP from Pollard’s Rip Van Winkle side project from last year, though, Crawlspace of the Pantheon is one of the most gripping and front-to-back solid Guided by Voices albums in…well, a couple years (so, like, a half-dozen LPs). Maybe this is the new Guided by Voices album you’ll dive right into, maybe it’ll stay on the shelf until the moment is right, but Crawlspace of the Pantheon will be there to appreciate even after the band that created it has moved onto the next one. (Read more)
It’s All You, Cowboy – I Can’t Eat
Release date: February 13th
Record label: Crutch of Memory
Genre: Synthpop, indie pop, alt-country, twee, piano pop
Formats: Cassette, digital
This It’s All You, Cowboy record might be the greatest album of all time. Probably not, but it might be. I Can’t Eat has an absurd but deadpan vibe to it that could only possibly come from a Midwestern “experimental grindcore” musician’s minimalist 80s art pop side project. That’s Frankie Furillo, a guy from Stoughton, Wisconsin who also plays in The Central and who put out a second album on Crutch of Memory (Dusk, Julia Blair, Amos Pitsch) back in February. The label calls I Can’t Eat “23 infectious yacht/boogie influenced pop tracks”, and Furillo himself cites Michael McDonald as an influence. Just the kind of thing I’d expect a grindcore musician to release on a Midwestern alt-country label, of course.
Labrador – The Rosy Red World
Release date: June 5th
Record label: No Way of Knowing
Genre: Alt-country, country rock, country punk, garage rock, Americana
Formats: Vinyl, CD, digital
The third Labrador album in four years, The Rosy Red World, keeps the Philadelphia group moving forward by embracing a more kinetic country-punk (relatively speaking) sound and delving explicitly into the realm of protest music. Far from being an awkward fit, it would almost be disingenuous for a band to claim folk music, punk rock, Neil Young, and soul as influences without having something to say about the state of things. The Rosy Red World enters the arena white-knuckled and with gritted teeth, but with the purpose and precision of musical craftsmen. (Read more)
Land Whales – How to Make a Breakfast
Release date: March 13th
Record label: Buh
Genre: Noise rock, experimental rock, punk rock, fuzz rock, shoegaze
Formats: Cassette, digital
Land Whales were started by vocalist/guitarist Martín Schellekens in Havana, Cuba in 2021, and while Schellekens recently relocated from Havana to The Netherlands, he recorded How to Make a Breakfast, the second Land Whales album, with regular collaborator Martín Espinosa in Havana before departing. How to Make a Breakfast is an abrasive, maxed-out noise rock record; more accessible influences like Sonic Youth and shoegaze are present, but Schellekens and Espinosa are truly committed to making challenging pillars of noise music as well. Droning feedback, sludgy noise punk, blistering post-hardcore, and more or less straightforward indie rock all figure into How to Make a Breakfast. (Read more)
Rosy Overdrive 