The Best Shoegaze Songs Of 2024
History doesn’t repeat, but its guitars sure do chime.
If 2022 was like 1990 for shoegaze, a year of budding promise in the underground and palpable anticipation that a major breakthrough was imminent, then 2023 was its 1991 — the year the word “shoegaze” was first devised to codify the sound and identify a greater movement. In 1991 and 2023 alike, shoegaze was inescapable: landmark years in the genre’s history when the scene was thriving, creative innovation ran rampant, and its zeitgeist-piercing popularity coalesced into a cross-continental cultural moment. That makes 2024 the modern analog to 1992 — the year many of shoegaze’s primary critical champions deemed it dead, and several of shoegaze’s pioneering bands pivoted to different sounds (Ride’s less abrasive Going Blank Again, Pale Saints’ post-punkier In Ribbons, Moose’s jangle-country …XYZ). As history now reveals, 1992 was also the year that many of shoegaze’s most revolutionary creative forces were just beginning to hit their strides (Slowdive, Seefeel, Medicine, etc.). What that bodes for 2025 remains to be seen, but I’m feeling lucky that the next Souvlaki is in someone’s chamber right now.
On the whole, 2024 felt mostly like a year of transition and brilliance around the margins. Last year’s major label shoegaze signees, Wisp (Interscope) and Julie (Atlantic), delivered their first releases for the big dogs. While certainly well-regarded among fans and critics (Julie’s my anti-aircraft carrier, especially), neither record came close to the sort of mainstream — or even mainstream indie — crossover that some suits may have predicted. There wasn’t another TikTok hit as big as Wisp’s “Your Face” or quannnic’s “life imitates life.” Sure, some really corny bullshit got disproportionately popular online, but shoegaze didn’t lose its subcultural identity like many pearl-clutchers feared it would after last year’s TikTok takeover. Underground groups like Glare and They Are Gutting A Body Of Water continued to organically grow their audiences on the live circuit, and countless bands, both vets and newbies, released new material. There were clear highlights and plenty of buzz around certain bands, but no 2024 shoegaze album landed with the thwomp of a surefire classic.
However, to call it a down year for shoegaze would require strenuous amounts of cynicism and incuriosity. Every week, I felt like I stumbled into at least one new song that reinforced my belief that shoegaze remains firmly in a golden period. That said, most of the freshest, coolest, most novel sounds are coming from bands on the outskirts. The best shoegaze in 2024 didn’t conform to tired conventions or cash in on a booming nostalgia market. I was drawn to songs that sound tapped into what’s presently happening outside of shoegaze; artists who see internet rappers and cutting edge electronic producers as their creative kinfolk. Indie bands who use the studio as an instrument at a time when DAWs are more capable than ever. The songs I’ve written about below don’t just get me excited about where shoegaze is currently at, but fill me with hope about where the sound might go in the second half of the 2020s. Songs that are so conceptually forward-thinking, so texturally divine, so emotionally resonant, that they make me feel like maybe, just maybe, the best has still yet to come.
The best song that sounds like shoegaze in 2029
They Are Gutting a Body of Water – “gravewax”
TAGABOW are the most important band in modern shoegaze. Their visionary sound, aesthetic, and live presentation are spawning imitators left and right, and their songwriter Doug Dulgarian helms Julia’s War Recordings, the Creation Records of 2020s shoegaze (Wednesday, Feeble Little Horse, and Glixen have all been part of the family). TAGABOW are the genre’s nucleus right now, and the collection of half-baked experiments they tossed on streaming services this year, swanlike: loosies 2020-2023, contains their boldest, freakiest ideas yet. The shaggy, 22-song tape is the shoegaze equivalent to Doris’ lo-fi bedroom-rap opus, Ultimate Love Songs Collection — brittle, silly, spontaneous, yet full of deeply affecting textures and tasteful stick-and-poke hooks.
“gravewax” is the one I keep coming back to. I love the way the bassline sounds like dunking your head underwater and pressing your ear to the side of the pool jet. The wasp’s nest guitars buzz in and out like a shoddy radio signal, and Dulgarian’s cyborgian murmurs use the Roland SP-404’s most outré vocal effects to inject shoegaze with some strikingly fresh timbres — much like how Robin Guthrie used excessive reverb to elevate Liz Fraser’s yodels heavenward. That’s right: Cocteaus and TAGABOW mentioned in the same breath. That’s the plane this band are operating on with songs like “gravewax.”
The best song that sounds like shoegaze in 1993
On their first album in 13 years, Kranky stalwarts Belong outfitted their streaky shoegaze drones with motorik drum machine grooves, resulting in a somnambulist marathon that would probably sound really good if you were dangerously close to falling asleep behind the wheel while careening down a dark country road (please don’t test that theory). The record’s exhilarating centerpiece, “Souvenir,” sits somewhere between post-Isn’t Anything My Bloody Valentine, Faust, and Seefeel. It exists in blissful ignorance to every trend that’s permeated the last 10 years of shoegaze, instead residing in a mythical timeline where Peter Kember got both Fennesz and the Jesus And Mary Chain to join his E.A.R. project. Except “Souvenir” is better than that. It actually exists.
The best platonic-ideal-of-shoegaze song
Sunshy might just be the best new band in all of shoegaze. The Chicago upstarts are mining from My Bloody Valentine’s infinitely deep well of inspiration without getting too high on Loveless’ fumes and succumbing to dull pastiche. Sure, Sunshy have Kevin Shields’ pedalboard pulled up on their phones, and their male-female membership allows their vocals to fuse into an androgynous blur à la MBV. But most importantly, Sunshy know how to write gobsmackingly wonderful songs. “dissolve” is one of many knockouts on their debut LP, I don’t care what comes next — an album title that invites me to respond aloud, “Yes, that’s true. With shoegaze songs as good as ‘dissolve,’ I don’t care what comes next either.” A song like “dissolve” (or “Hyacinth” — or “Stop saying how you’ve been”) is about all I need to get by.
The best shoegaze song for a haunted forest
Midwife – “Rock N Roll Never Forgets”
Midwife’s droney, doomy “heaven metal” output doesn’t all qualify for shoegaze membership, but “Rock n Roll Never Forgets” certainly does. The seven-minute opener to this year’s staggering No Depression in Heaven LP is weightless and drifting until it’s not. Curlicues of reverse reverb swoop down like swallows, while loops of oblong feedback bob to and fro like lobster buoys. By the end, what began as a murmuring lullaby has crescendoed into an orchestral stupor that’s both serenely comforting and uncannily poignant, like waking up from a sleep so deep you feel disoriented, unsure if what you dreamt of was reality or fantasy.
The best shoegaze song for when the USD is no longer the world reserve currency and our economy collapses
DIIV – “Raining On Your Pillow”
All four DIIV records sound different, but they’re all unmistakably DIIV. It’s rare for a shoegaze band to evolve that much without losing their identity in the process, but even a song like “Raining On Your Pillow” — far more pensive and spooky than their brisk jaunts of yore — still exudes the Brooklyn band’s trademark duskiness. DIIV are more attuned to atmosphere than ever on this year’s Frog In Boiling Water, so while “Raining On Your Pillow” eschews the falling-lumber fuzz racket of “In Amber” or “Brown Paper Bag,” the feedback swells buried deep in the mix make Cole Smith’s breathy exhales sound especially arcane and grim. If every ‘gaze band had DIIV’s attention to detail, the genre would be in even finer form.
The best shoegaze song named after an iconic millennial children’s toy
Despite my affinity toward shoegaze’s more radical boundary-pushers, sometimes, I just want to hear the classic sound done right. In times like these, I turn to Austin, TX, quartet Blushing. “Tamagotchi” is simply a sugarplum indie-pop song dressed to the nines in shoegaze garb — glint-eyed reverb on the vocals, wooly fuzz on the wailing guitars, and a mix that reflects Alan McGee’s initial M.O. for Creation Records: to marry punk and psychedelia. The song’s ’60s pop harmonies evoke peak-era Ride, while its pucky riffs nod to Lush’s earlier, punchier sound. You’ve heard it before, and bands like Blushing assure it’ll never get old.
The best breakcore-infused post-angelic shoegaze song
Some of the craziest shoegaze sounds of the last year are coming out on Siren For Charlotte, the Japanese “post-angelic shoegaze” label that fellow scribe Jude Noel wrote a great profile on earlier this year. kinoue64 is a Japanese artist who’s released a boatload of vocaloid shoegaze in the 2020s, including three albums this year alone. The best stuff I’ve heard from their eclectic catalog resides on their Siren For Charlotte EP, 半永久機関, which journeys deeper into the break-gaze dimension MBV ripped open with their jungle-influenced 2013 outlier, “wonder 2.” Sonically, kinoue64’s music is closer to the clean, anglophile coolness of the early Too Pure material than the urban wasteland racket that Full Body 2 and TAGABOW have recently been fucking with Stateside. Track two, “辿り着く場所,” lays Hatsune Mike chirps over a delicate guitar loop that clinks into the frisky drum breaks like icicles hitting concrete. If you listen to each element in isolation, it’s difficult to tell where the song’s shoegaze balminess is even coming from, but warm-breath-on-chilled-skin it conjures.
The best shoegaze song that sounds like it’s melting
Glixen are one of the most popular – and polarizing – shoegaze bands of the last couple years, and they dropped a few singles this year that continued feeding the flames of their hype. “foreversoon” is my favorite of the bunch. The Arizona band seem to be moving in a grunge-gazier direction on recent tracks, but I prefer when their music sounds like wax dripping down the brass arms of an ornate candelabra. Especially after seeing them live at this year’s Slide Away festival, I think Glixen have an understanding of volume and sonic granularity that many of their peers lack. They’re more artsy than they let on, and “foreversoon” proves it.
Three perfect shoegaze songs by underrated Julia’s War bands
DSU-era Alex G + Small Black EP-style chillwave = shoegaze, to my ears.
A standout from a record that’s so boldly out of step with modern shoegaze (while still operating within a post-internet shoegaze framework) that I’m genuinely embarrassed I didn’t spend more time with it this year. Don’t you dare turn this song off until you get to the three-minute mark. It’ll make you levitate.
I don’t know if Her New Knife are really underrated anymore, but their nightcore+++ EP from earlier this year certainly is. The seven-song set includes pitched-up versions of older HNK songs and a few newbies that are more like fragments than fully-formed ideas. The low stakes vibe of the project allows HNK to dig into their quirks and shovel up some of the most peculiar noises of the ongoing Philly wave. My favorite cut, “mouth+++”, flips their 2023 doom march into a chipper pop song with vocals that are pitched so absurdly high that the screaming climax almost sounds like Kanye’s shrieks in “I Am A God.”
The best shoegaze song by a band with one song
This band has one song. Why do they only have one song? Have you heard this song? It’s a perfect song. Why don’t they make another one? Someone please tell them to make another song.
The best unabashed My Bloody Valentine tribute song
Dummy know exactly what they’re doing by naming this song “Soonish,” and that extends to the musical execution as well. This is A-tier 1991-core; a little baggy, a smidge “Super-Electric,” and totally off its face on whip-cracking guitar noise. R.I.P. Andrew Weatherall, you would’ve loved remixing this song.
The best song fusing shoegaze with slowcore
Omilgop – “until I spill everything out”
At a time when Slowdive and Duster bear equal influence on today’s Jazzmaster generals, slowcore and shoegaze have become fully enmeshed. However, achey tempos burdened by corroded guitar smudge can only lope so far before the awes turn to yawns. South Korean musician omilgop livened up that oft-redundant sound with this year’s album, a trail of fading. While I admire that many tracks trod well beyond the eight-minute mark, the easiest entrypoint is “until I spill everything out,” a nervy leg-thumper that crescendos into a noise-pop refrain suitable for a rom-com’s end credits. An epoch of angst and hardship sounds like it’s spilling out of omilgop when he repeats the hook again and again, as if its life-affirming message becomes realer and more freeing on each go-around.
The best shoegaze song with a synth that goes oooo-wee-oo-weeee-oooo
Bleary Eyed hail from the same lineage of Philly scuzz-gaze that yielded Blue Smiley, Knifeplay, and TAGABOW, and at this point, they deserve A-list status in that crowded field. On the stellar “2 True,” Bleary Eyed share Full Body 2’s fascination with smeary synths that bleed down the mix like fresh watercolor brushstrokes. The whingeing keys are so loud and lustrous that they almost sound like sentient mews — or like chiptuned shards of Lovesliescrushing songs. Bleary Eyed differ from the dream-‘n’-bassy FB2 in how they anchor those electric angel cries to heavy-duty guitars and rumbling low-end, achieving an icy-hot sensation that evokes boiling water eviscerating a patch of stubborn sidewalk snow.
The best grunge-gaze song
All I want for Christmas is for grunge-gaze to have reached its peak output in 2024. Far too many boneless Deftones clones and spiritless Nothing rips have saturated the genre in recent years. That’s why I love the tattered sound of Glaring Orchid’s new album, i hope you’re okay. Most bands doing grunge-gaze are mining from the metallurgic girth of Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden. Glaring Orchid’s music references the pre-Nirvana definition of grunge; shabby, dirt-stained, down-and-out. A song like “sweater” doesn’t triumph against the odds; rather, its vocals cower at the threat of its own riffs, sagging into its chair like a hoodie-cloaked teen in the back of the class. It’s refreshing to hear grunge-gaze with actual holes in its jeans.
The best Parannoul-influenced shoegaze song made by a former digicore artist
Like jane remover and quannnic before them, twikipedia is another expat of the sub-genre digicore (the rap-rooted sibling genre to hyperpop) who’s since made the jump to shoegaze. The Brazilian 20-year-old learned that Korean bedroom-gaze musician Parannoul made his seminal 2021 album, To See The Next Part Of the Dream, entirely with the use of virtual instruments, and used a similar toolkit for their massively underappreciated 2024 LP, for the rest of your life. “windchimes” showcases twikipedia’s knack for wispy indie-pop melodies imbued with an emo pathos. There’re catchier tunes on for the rest of your life, but they really nailed the guitar textures on “windchimes,” particularly the main motif that seems to flap and crumple like a flag blowing in the wind.
The best non-shoegaze song with a shoegaze-ian effect
d0llywood1 – “Don’t be bitten twice”
d0llywood1 is another digicore vet who thus far hasn’t pivoted to shoegaze. However, her otherworldly 2024 album, This Is Just A Dream (and soon I will awake), was explicitly influenced by the disorienting fogginess of My Bloody Valentine — especially the noise-drenched standout, “Don’t be bitten twice.” This song makes me feel like my brain is crumbling into particles and forming uncanny fractal patterns like those videos of sand dancing to speaker vibrations.
The best non-2024 shoegaze song I heard this year
The Boo Radleys – “The Finest Kiss”
A spoiler for my forthcoming shoegaze book is that I’ll be giving Boo Radleys their much-deserved flowers. I think they’re the most underrated UK band in the genre’s first wave. The psych-rock and Britpop they made after abandoning shoegaze ranges from good to miserably cloying (“Wake Up, Boo” is a dreadful song). The songs on their first three EP’s – Kaleidoscope, Boo! Up, and Every Heaven, none of which are on streaming – are transcendentally wonderful. “The Finest Kiss” (1991) is possibly the best shoegaze song not written by My Bloody Valentine. It’s the perfect balance of indie-pop songcraft and screamin’-feedback noise-bliss. If I was actively dying while this song was playing, I think I’d be so distracted by its tingly, wistful chorus and gently scalding bathwater of distorted guitars that I’d forget all about my mortal undoing and just soak in its sudsy resonance while my soul drifts off into the oblivion. If a new band began pulling from the early Boo Radleys sound, I’d be smitten. “The Finest Kiss” is… muah!
Stream most of these songs as a playlist:
