Punk Underground - August 2026
One last glorious blast of punk before summer slips away.
Featuring: Ballyhoo!, Sleep In., Chapter 33, Rescape, The Offsailors, Tear Dungeon, Dragged Up, Doom Scroll, Camiches, THE ROOM, Still Insane and Brunch.
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Punk Underground - Punk | Post-Punk | Pop Punk | Garage Punk
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Ballyhoo! - Thunderstorms
Photo: Dennis Pike
From the forthcoming album Bad Summer, out August 28 via Right Coast Records
Thunderstorms is basically someone plugging a live wire directly into my summer. Ballyhoo!'s beachy pop-punk comes charging in with giant guitars and an earworm chorus, while Howi Spangler turns relationship turbulence into the wonderfully reckless promise, "I would drive in a thunderstorm".
There's something ridiculously life-affirming about a song that says, yes, we're fighting, yes, we've both had enough and I’m still driving toward you. Instant adrenaline.
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Sleep In. - It's All Ratfucked
Photo: Mike Dameo
From the forthcoming album Tangled In The Vines, due September 25
There's something beautifully appropriate about calling a song It's All Ratfucked and then throwing Midwest emo guitar work and alternative-rock hooks into the mess. Sleep In. sound like they've opened every drawer, found every tangled wire, and decided to plug everything in anyway.
The vocals carry that wonderfully exposed, conversational vulnerability that makes the song feel like shouting across a room full of noise. Tangled In The Vines already sounds like it’s going to be gloriously untidy.
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Chapter 33 - Trust
Trust catches that strange moment after someone breaks you open and you instinctively slam every door shut again. Chapter 33's pop-punk/alt-rock mix gives Jacob Collins' lyrics room to move from "Your trust was broken" toward the much harder proposition: "You’ve got to take the chance, extend your hand".
It's a pop-punk song about learning to trust again, and sometimes that's punk enough.
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Rescape - Let Me Go
Let Me Go comes at you like somebody kicked open the rehearsal-room door and yelled, MOVE. Rescape fuse fast pop-punk with alternative-rock and punk-rock urgency, turning the song into a full-speed shove forward rather than a polite request for space.
The vocals ride that emotional pressure without losing the melody, giving the whole thing the feeling of running with nowhere to look but ahead. This one absolutely earns the banger label.
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The Offsailors - Too Old To Skate
Photo: Tommy Krause
From Too Old To Skate
The title alone had me grinning before the first riff landed. The Offsailors take classic hardcore and '90s skate punk and turn getting older into a middle finger to anyone who thinks punk has an expiration date.
There's a rough, basement-show quality to the vocal attack that fits the band's party-punk spirit perfectly, while the whole thing barrels along like a bunch of people who have collectively decided that knees, mortgages and common sense are none of punk's business.
Growing older? Sure. Growing quieter? Absolutely not.
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Tear Dungeon - I'm Not Dead Yet
Photo: Pooneh Ghana
From the forthcoming album Squirm, due October 2 via TODO Records
I'm Not Dead Yet has the wonderfully obnoxious survival instinct of someone who has been handed every possible reason to quit and responded by turning the amplifier up. Built from the band's stripped-down two-chord assignment, the song feels like punk stripped down to one essential fact: still here, still making noise.
Andrew Cashen's delivery has the kind of blunt, confrontational force that suits lyrics born from genuine disbelief at still being alive. Squirm may be called Squirm, but this track is already standing up and refusing to stay down.
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Dragged Up - Rapunzel
Photo: Stuart Reidman
From the forthcoming album Trzy
Rapunzel sounds like somebody threw an old garage-punk record, a saxophone, a battered fairy tale and a fistful of noise into the same washing machine. Dragged Up's garage-punk, art-rock racket keeps mutating beneath the vocals, while that X-Ray Spex-inspired saxophone comes tearing through like it has somewhere much stranger to be.
I love the image at the centre of it: a tower-dwelling misfit blasting battered records into the sky while the beautiful weirdos gather below. This is exactly where punk belongs. Outside the box, preferably setting fire to the box.
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Doom Scroll - The Ravine
Photo: Alex Binder
From the forthcoming album Exhausted Dialogue, due October 6
The Ravine feels like a folk-punk road movie where absolutely everything goes wrong and somehow the van keeps moving. Doom Scroll turn an absurd catalogue of disasters into something defiant, with their punk, pop and folk blend carrying the weight without losing its forward motion.
The vocal storytelling gives the song the feeling of someone recounting catastrophe at 2 a.m., half laughing because otherwise you might scream. There’s no tidy redemption here; just the stubborn, beautiful fact that they’re still playing.
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Camiches - El amor no dicho
From El Dolor de lo Irremediable
This one hurts in that place where punk sometimes becomes more powerful than shouting. Camiches' “Feeling Core" - punk and hardcore threaded with melancholy, nostalgia and acoustic textures - turns El Amor No Dicho into a farewell to a beloved companion whose absence still seems to occupy the room.
The vocals carry grief without dressing it up, while the image of coyotes howling beneath a full moon gives the song an almost nocturnal tenderness. A beautiful little wound of a song.
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THE ROOM - Things Have Learnt to Walk that Ought to Crawl
There's something deliciously unsettling about a song written in 1982 returning to tell us that apparently things have learned to walk that ought to crawl and somehow sounding completely at home in 2026.
The Room's jangling post-punk guitars and driving drums give the track a nervous forward pull, while Dave Jackson's vocals sit right inside that anxious landscape of sleepless eyes, stormy weather and "words just fail me".
It feels like walking through a city where everything familiar has become strange. Old song, new nightmare.
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Still Insane - Do What You Want
Photo: @alexandre charron
From the forthcoming album When Friendship's Not Enough, out September 4 via Thousand Islands Records
Do What You Want hits like the moment you finally stop explaining yourself. Still Insane's fast-paced melodic punk rock races on urgent riffs and a chorus built for yelling back at every voice telling you who you’re supposed to be.
Eric Dorval's vocals keep the message blunt and unvarnished: no one else gets to choose your path. Sometimes the most punk thing you can do is simply stop asking permission.
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Brunch - Man Alive
Photo Credit: Mary Kate McGuirk
From the double A-side Please Kill Me / Man Alive
Man Alive slips into darker territory, wrapping Brunch's punk edge in shimmering synths and a strangely romantic ache. Its vocals give the song a vulnerable pull as it stares straight into alienation, depression, dreams and reality, and still reaches for love on the other side.
I love that it refuses to pretend the darkness isn't there; radical hope hits harder when you've actually looked into the abyss.
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About Eugenia Roditis
Eugenia's passion for music was ignited from an early age as she grew up in a family of musicians. She loves attending concerts and festivals, while constantly seeking fresh and exciting new artists across diverse genres. Eugenia joined the MusicnGear team in 2012.
Contact Eugenia Roditis at eugenia.roditis@kinkl.com
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