Who would have thought that this is where Mary Timony would have ended up in 2019? The former Helium head honcho was once the poster girl for detuned, anti-pop alternative guitar music, but this decade has seen her soften in her abrasion.

Attention, entire electronic dance music landscape, please take note. The old English chaps, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons (aka The Chemical Brothers), have returned to enamour us with their sonic orgasms.

With their first two albums—2013’s self-titled debut and 2016’s The Dream Is Over—Toronto’s PUP quickly established themselves as one of the most interesting bands around.

Cage The Elephant have been on an upward trajectory since their self-titled debut dropped in 2009, leaving a trail of alternative rock hits along the way. Ten years and four studio albums later, the Nashville-based six-piece shows no signs of slowing down.

Twenty years ago, American Football, a trio of college students then located in Urbana, Illinois, released their debut self-titled album, American Football, and restructured the path that emo rock would take for the following decades.

This much-vaunted Dublin five-piece follow a series of increasingly successful 7-inch releases and acclaimed support slots with the likes of Shame and IDLES, with Dogrel, named for the “lowest” form of working class Irish poetry, and a debut to die for.

With an output of 14 albums in two decades, singer/songwriter Damien Jurado exhausted pretty much every avenue. On his new album In the Shape of a Storm, Jurado resigns to just the bare elements that anchor his restless career: his voice, his words, and his guitar. Opening cut “Lincoln” concedes as much: “There is nothing to hide.”

British songwriter Benjamin Francis Leftwich has always made beautiful music—calming and celestial songs held together by his soothing, solemn vocals.

In 2017, Washington, D.C post-punks Priests announced themselves to the world with, despite the claims for the contrary, a big bang.