The new shoegaze: a canon forming in real time

Pittsburgh's noise-pop pranksters: Girl with Fish (2023) crams hooks, static and humor into 26 minutes. The wave's most charming record, shoegaze that refuses to be solemn.

Members of hardcore band Vein.fm running Deftones worship through actual shoegaze: We're Not Here to Be Loved (2022) is the record that fused the heavy and dreamy wings of the revival, and half the new bands' secret blueprint.

Texas's grunge-gaze standard-bearers: Moments of Clarity (2023) sounds like 1994 alt-rock radio beamed through a Big Muff. The bridge between the revival and the people who just want great loud songs.

Fort Worth's Trauma Ray made the wave's heaviest pure-shoegaze statement: Chameleon (2024) rolls doom-weight guitars under weightless vocals. The Texas scene's arrival as the genre's American engine room.

London's Whitelands (led by Etienne Quartey-Papafio) released their debut on Sonic Cathedral in 2024, consciously reclaiming a genre whose first wave was whiter than its influences. Gorgeous, political and overdue.

Will Anderson's one-man wall of sound, signed to Jack White's Third Man: Cartwheel (2023) buries power-pop songwriting under an avalanche of guitars. The revival's best pure songs-per-minute ratio.

Philadelphia's TAGABOW run shoegaze through breakbeats, DJ tags and dial-up textures. Destiny XL (2022) is the scene's internet-native id, and their live shows are the revival's communal ritual.

From the digicore internet rather than any local scene: Kenopsia (2023) is bedroom shoegaze with hyperpop's emotional pressure. Proof the genre's next generation comes from Discord servers, not record shops.

Phoenix's Glixen are the wave's purest MBV devotional act, all glide guitar and breathed vocals across a run of EPs. The band the genre's lifers point to when asked who actually has the sound.

The LA trio that became the new wave's flagship: detuned Sonic Youth angles, whisper-to-roar dynamics and total visual control. Their debut LP on Atlantic (a shoegaze band on a major, again, finally) is the scene's biggest swing.

Natalie Lu went from a bedroom Garageband demo to the revival's breakout solo star while still a student. "Your Face" took off on TikTok before she had played a show. Her debut album is the clearest evidence of how this wave spreads: phone first, venue later.

A Nashville duo that sold its synths to make rent, then rebuilt every electronic sound from samples of its own guitars. The result keeps My Bloody Valentine's glide and whisper but runs jungle breaks and glitch underneath. Stereogum named it the best shoegaze album of 2025, and it is the record the scene's fussiest listeners keep returning to.

Philadelphia's Bleary Eyed spent eight years drifting from post-punk to dream pop before this July 2025 LP on Born Losers pulled them into shoegaze proper. Sampled textures and synth lines sit under guitars that bend and wash out. It is the friendliest door into the wave's Philadelphia end.