The best new rock songs you need to hear right now

Congratulations to Lancastrian rockers Wytch Hazel, whose now-classic new single Elements topped the leaderboard in our most recent Tracks Of The Week fandango. And look, here it is again!

Following in Wytch Hazel’s mighty footsteps were Whiskey Myers, whose Tailspin beat out a difficult Australian opponent in the shape of Airbourne’s Gutsy.

Below, you’ll find another eight examples of excellent rock action. Cumulatively, they’ll improve your week.

Castle Rat – Wizard

It starts off all slow, doomy and spaced-out, but it’s not long before this lot are riffing out like Black Sabbath at their youngest and hungriest, shot through with NWOBHM bravado and fantastical storytelling. The Rat Queen (Riley Pinkerton to her mates) had this to say of its forthcoming parent album: “The Bestiary is a conceptual book of beasts containing a collection of mystical creatures from a world forgotten. The last remaining souls of each have been gathered and preserved by ‘The Wizard.’”

---

Tuk Smith & The Restless Hearts – Troubled Paradise

Clearly on a scorching creative streak, the former Biters frontman turned Nashville singer/songwriter/producer raises his own rock’n’roll bar again (and channels his inner Ricky Warwick to classy effect, voice-wise) on the rollicking yet smart, immersive Troubled Paradise. And that juicy bridge guitar solo at the two-minute-thirty-second marker is just sublime – you think it’s going straight-up Thin Lizzy, but then it doesn’t. Few people today do this kind of music as well as he does.

---

Starbenders – Chantilly Boy

Back with their first new single since last year’s Tokyo, Atlanta’s beehived glam mavericks can always be counted on for rock earworms generously laced with dark twists and strains of heady, dreamlike escapism. Totally old-school but full of its young creators’ own lives, experience and personality, it was inspired by a former friend of frontwoman Kimi Shelter’s – met at an Atlanta thrift store, and sadly not long for this world. “We got to talking, and he shared his story,” she recalls. “Life dealt a harsh hand and he lived on the streets, yet he lit up the room like the sun. Then, just like that, he was gone.”

---

De’Wayne – Sundays

The Houston-turned-LA dude’s latest single (hot off his upcoming album, June) finds him in full blown 80s anthem-maker mode, all starry-eyed synths and singalong soft rock banger sensibilities that beg for enormous outdoor stages – with crowds to match. “When I wrote this song, I wanted to explain the complicated bond between a father and son,” De’Wayne explains. “One where love and pain, admiration, and resentment all live side by side. It’s about seeing your father as both a hero and a human, flawed and real.”

---

California Irish – Something Different

Cormac Neeson goes full flower-power hippie dude on this dulcet taste of his new project California Irish. All gauzy, gorgeously harmonised vocal layers, Led Zep III mystique and dreamy 60s Laurel Canyon-y folky vibes, it’s a world away from his hard-rocking antics with The Answer – a beguiling sensitive side to this longstanding voice of 21st century rock’n’roll. Less Marshall stacks and distortion, more recorders and introspective acoustic lines, but all beautifully executed.

---

Buckcherry – Machine Gun

Heavy-booted, fat-riffed rock’n’roll is the order of the day on this slice of Buckcherry’s balladless latest Roar Like Thunder. “Machine Gun is about a hot girl that only likes bad boys,” Josh Todd says. “Growing up in Southern California as a teenager there was a lot of them.” It ain’t pretty. It ain’t exactly clever either. But it does rock like a beast in dancing shoes at an AC/DC-themed all-nighter, and for that we have a lot of time for it.

---

Devilskin – Swelter

Taken from Devilskin’s upcoming fourth album Re-Volution, Swelter finds the Kiwi quartet in spectacularly boisturous form, screaming out of the blocks with a song that’s part arena metal, part spiky, in-your-face punk. With a typically towering performance from singer Jennie Skulander, these are good times for the band, who walked away with the People’s Choice Award at last month’s Aotearoa Music Awards. Great video, too.

---

Royal Republic – Venus

Covering Shocking Blue’s classic Venus (later performed by Bananarama, Tom Jones, J-Lo, etc, etc) might seem like a lazy option for Swedish party rockers Royal Republic, but their version is so stuffed with panache it’s impossible not to love it. With a production job that sounds like grunge-era Butch Vig at his best, it’s more fun than finals day at the Banana Ball and is the first in a series of a “four-part musical saga” in which the band will “reimagine” a quartet of disco classics. Literally bring it on.

Polly is deputy editor at Classic Rock magazine, where she writes and commissions regular pieces and longer reads (including new band coverage), and has interviewed rock’s biggest and newest names. She also contributes to Louder, Prog and Metal Hammer and talks about songs on the 20 Minute Club podcast. Elsewhere she’s had work published in The Musician, delicious. magazine and others, and written biographies for various album campaigns. In a previous life as a women’s magazine junior she interviewed Tracey Emin and Lily James – and wangled Rival Sons into the arts pages. In her spare time she writes fiction and cooks.