The 20 best rock songs right now

This sticky new banger from London band Sorry is full of phlegm and sleazy glamour. You’re going to want to hit repeat on this one.

“I challenge you to all out fucking life” is the energy we’re taking into 2019.

Girlpool’s next album, What Chaos Is Imaginary (due February 1), is shaping up to be something really special. “Hire” channels Elliott Smith’s melancholy before bursting into life in the chorus. Nobody can stop Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad right now.

Bradford Cox and Co. make a welcome return with a song that hints at religious imagery, people working “their lives away,” and death. There’s also a big old guitar solo in there, if that’s more your kind of thing. Deerhunter's new album Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? is out on January 18.

Earlier this month, Sunflower Bean followed up this year’s 22 In Blue album with a new EP, King Of Dudes. “Come For Me” is a clear highlight, as the band dives deeper into their unironic love of glam rock. Strap on a pair of glittery platform boots and enjoy.

This sounds much more like a Tame Impala song than an A$AP Rocky one, which only whets the appetite for the band’s likely return in 2019.

Alex G brings the beauty and Oneohtrix brings the existential dread on this cut from the latter's Love In The Time Of Lexapro EP. Life’s about balance.

“Many heads in your living room/ all from high school who never moved.” Is Mk. Gee’s “New Year” a song about growing pains or Garden State fan fiction? You decide.

More flamingos in music videos, please.

Isaac deBroux-Slone and Raina Bock are two Midwesterners making crunchy power-pop filled with longing and heart. “Communication” is a paradox: a song about a failure to connect sent directly to your heart.

London’s Bakar is determined to bring back a mid-'00s indie sound — think fellow Brits Jamie T and Jack Penate — into the present. “Dracula” suggests he might just be on to something.

Fontaines D.C.’s snarling brand of post-punk is a call-to-arms looking for a band with some bite. The way frontman Grian Chatten asks “is it too real for ya?” in his thick Irish accent feels rhetorical.

A favorite on Frank Ocean’s blonded RADIO shows, Arthur just released his debut album Woof Woof. “Sweet Memory” is perhaps the most straightforward moment on the wonderfully weird record, but is no less charming for it.

Angel Du$t — the Baltimore pop-punks featuring members of Trapped Under Ice and Turnstile — have signed to Roadrunner Records, and their first task as labelmates of Slipknot and various other heavy bands was dropping this goofy, rabble-rousing acoustic sing-along. Perfect.

Spellling’s “Haunted Water” tells the story of colonial violence on the slave ship routes of the Middle Passage in an intensely heavy swirl of synths and ethereal vocals.

Stealing Sheep are a trio from Liverpool whose new video is a tribute to the early days of the internet. Check it out above if you’re a fan of superior electro-rock and/or chat rooms and pop-up ads.

Pottery’s jerky, Orange Juice-inspired art-rock has its eyes locked firmly on the dancefloor. This Canadian band are ones to keep an eye on.

Three teenagers from the middle-of-nowhere in northern England have no right making music this funky.

“Don’t hold my hand,” Cherry Glazerr’s Clementine Creevy sings on her band’s new single, “Don’t be my man.” The lyrical rejection twinned with a newfound cavernous garage rock marks a new chapter for the L.A. band.