This is a good week for rock and roll. A lot of good music dropped on Friday. Young bands. Old bands. One young band playing with an old band. New songs. Old songs. One new song that sounds an awful lot like an old song. There have been singles released in advance of albums and singles dropped all on their lonesome. And there has been a very nice range.
Emo to punk. Classic rock to alt. There’s even some dream pop and prog rock, but you won’t hear about those tracks here. Not my thing.
I’ve seen a bunch of the bands that released good new music this week, but there are several that I have barely ever listened to. This has been a decent year for rock and roll so far, but as we cross the July midpoint, it just got a lot better. Here are ten tracks that dropped this week that you might want to check out if you are out testing the theory that rock and roll is still alive.
10 singles that run the gamut of 2026 rock and roll
“Closer” by the Linda Lindas and Hayley Williams
We’ll start with the band I have been writing about for the past several years. If I’m keeping track correctly, two of the four Linda Lindas are now out of high school. That means it may still be several years before the quartet can begin recording and touring on a full-time basis. No bother. They’ve already opened for a Green Day national tour, as well as headlined medium-sized clubs themselves. And their third album will be out in late August.
As a second teaser, the SoCal quartet dropped “Closer” this week. (This is not a cover of the “Closer” you may be thinking about, but an original penned by Lucia de la Garza and Bela Salazar.) In a stroke of great fortune, long-time friend and supporter Hayley Williams was on hand to help develop the song and sing with the Lindas.
If anyone should know what it is like to be a Linda Linda, it would be Williams, who began her career with Paramore when she was in her early teens. Lucia and Mila’s father, Carlos, produced Paramore’s critically acclaimed 2023 album This Is Why.
Enough back story. As for the song itself, “Closer” is a coming-of-age story that hearkens back to early Paramore, especially a song like “All We Know,” the first track on Paramore’s first album. Beginning with Eloise Wong’s throbbing bass, it starts off with the pristine pop-rock that Lucia does as well as anyone.
But it doesn’t remain there for long, building into anthemic harder rock as Williams joins on the vocals. The Lindas have said their third album will go in a lot of different directions. You do get a slight hint of that on “Closer,” so it will be fun to hear what else they have in store.
“I’m Never Gonna R.I.P.” by Green Day
May as well move on to the band the Lindas opened for back in 2024. Billie Joe and the boys are back with a typically rollicking throwback number. It cribs heavily from “Jailhouse Rock,” with a dose of Billy Lee Riley rockabilly, but when you do it as well as Green Day, it isn’t really stealing. It’s an homage.
The lyrics, as you can tell from the title, are rebellious. The mood is joyous. It’s just great fun all the way around. This song is from the upcoming Nimrods album, which will accompany the movie Nimrods, about a ragtag rock band that comes to believe they will be opening for Green Day on tour. The movie gets its US release in mid-August.
“Zero Percent” by My Chemical Romance
You know what I hate? Deluxe editions. Nobody likes deluxe, expanded, or bonus. It’s just a perverse inversion of the early days of album sales, when labels would load up a bunch of filler onto an album with one or two hits. Now, artists – or labels – hold back material so a deluxe edition can come out tomorrow. I don’t blame Taylor Swift for any of the things she typically gets blamed for, but I can’t say I like this practice.
So MCR released Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys back in 2010. It was good. Perhaps not as good as The Black Parade (OK – you can delete the “perhaps”), but a good spin nonetheless. Might it have been better with the blistering “Zero Percent” included? Ask one of your Japanese friends because the song was only released as a bonus on the Japanese pressing.
But I’ll say it would have been better because “Zero Percent” is the best song on the album – indeed one MCR’s best songs period. Of course it has been floating around for years. But now you can hear it wonderfully remastered and officially released on the remaster of Danger Days.
“Loser” by Ax and the Hatchetmen
We’ll go from old to new. As with the title of the Linda Lindas’ new single, this is not that “Loser.” This one is lovely and energetic emo pop with wiry guitars and one of the best grooves of the year. Axel Ellis mixes in just enough sloppiness to keep the song from getting too pretty.
Alas, the Chicago rockers also released a deluxe version of their 2025 debut this year, including three new tracks. But “Loser” is a stand-alone. If you like it, then you can dive in on the deluxe So Much To Tell You.
“Beaches in Tennessee” by Cage the Elephant
I don’t know about you, but I feel like I have taken Cage the Elephant for granted from the time they exploded almost twenty years ago. “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” seeped into the bloodstream as if it had always been around. And the boys from Bowling Green have maintained a strong batting average ever since.
“Beaches in Tennessee” may be the closest they have come to those early songs, leaning hard into pop-rock with a vengeance. 2024’s Neon Pill was well-publicized as a difficult album that found Brad and Matt Schultz coming to terms with the death of their father. The new cut isn’t exactly lyrically happy, but it teems with more upbeat energy.
“Mean!” by Macy Todd
Macy Todd is from Georgia and is now based in Austin. That classifies her as a country artist in some people's books. She is not. There is a twang to her voice, but she is a rock-and-roller, closer to Janis or Lucinda than to Megan Moroney.
Her new EP, Pretty Ruthless, comes on the heels of her collaboration with fellow Georgian Mae Mae. Mae Mae has made LA her home, and their album Gummy Heart Eyes has more of a pop sheen. “Mean!” sums up Pretty Ruthless, with its much harder edge.
“Hi From Me” by Wet Leg
Yet another deluxe album. But I can’t work up too much anger about this because moisturizer was one of the best albums of 2025. Wet Leg powered right through any semblance of a sophomore slump. And to be honest, this bonus track would not have made the album a lot better.
It’s a bit of a trifle, clocking in at a sultry 105 seconds. And it doesn’t go all in on either Rhian Teasdale's feistiness or her arch wit. Superficially, it is a love song about moving on with an easy, jazzy groove.
Then, of course, toward the end, Rhian casually tosses in the line “Say hi from me to your dad” which potentially recasts the story. This song may not have made moisturizer a lot better, but it would have provided a lovely tonal respite, as it now does on the deluxe album.
“Knocking at the Sky” by The Last Dinner Party
I admit it has taken me a while to warm up to the London band’s baroque pop. I admired their debut Prelude to Ecstasy more than I liked it. I am happy to say that “Knocking at the Sky” has fully converted me. The pop grandeur seems focused into a quality rock song more than in their earlier tunes. It is portentous and engrossing in equal measure.
Did I mention that the song comes from the deluxe version of the band’s second album, From the Pyre? You can probably guess how I feel about that – but I still like the song very much.
“Do What’s Right (Happy) by Show Me the Body
I don’t know why it took me a decade to discover this New York-based punk trio. I like to think of that as in my wheelhouse, and I had heard of Show Me the Body. But their new album – just a regular album, mind you, and not “deluxe” - boasts 13 songs in a potent 37 minutes, and it has me seeking out their back catalogue.
The restraint on “Do What’s Right” is awesome. You know the explosion is coming as Julian Cashwan Pratt deadpans through his list of socially questionable passions, but he puts off the blowup until the final seconds. It works. “Do What’s Right” comes in the middle of the band’s musically diverse but always engaging fourth album, Alone Together.
“Neighbor Blues” by Jack White
Let’s conclude with a classic. White played his first two singles from Frozen Charlotte earlier this year on Saturday Night Live. “Neighbor Blues” is the fourth single. And I think it may just be the best.
Beginning with White’s unique, piercing guitar, he then dips into an old-school blues groove, which finds him entirely at home. This is one of those songs that may never be a popular hit, but should become a highlight of White’s live act for years to come.
Need a bonus? A deluxe track, as it were. There’s this British band who dropped an album today. Since I have been snottily dismissive of some of their recent output, I would like to say that “Mr. Charm,” the new single from a band calling themselves the Rolling Stones, is pretty damn good. If I have my numbers right, this is the 126th single the band has formally released.
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