Five new artists for fans of Nirvana
Where’s all the grunge music gone?
These days, trying to pin down the genre of a band is like trying to remember the coffee order of your most pedantic friend, all ‘post and ‘wave’ and three sugars with no foam. Back in the 1990s, the only genres Nirvana were splicing together were grunge and rock, while also utilising pop melodies to the best of their ability, which disseminated the allure of their sound with greater urgency to the angsty Gen X crowds looking for something to believe in. The scuzz was surrounded by a fresh and exciting level of buzz.
Nirvana’s discography provided challenging, rollicking music that was simultaneously easy to digest, the kind of music you could thrash your head to while still hearing all the composite parts dancing together in unity, working overtime to braid a raw, if somewhat dirty, sonic explosion. The band was as much a great purveyor of the MTV generation of music as it was a symptom of the underground scenes it crawled out from. These spaces haven’t disappeared, so where are they now and who is soundtracking the murky nights spent stuck to the corners of a dungeon bar, or hedging your bets on a tinnitus diagnosis just to feel the sludgy vibrations of the bass on the amp up close?
Really, the ladies are doing the heavy-lifting in this department. Brooklyn’s Trophy Wife, fronted by the incredible McKenzie Iazzetta, are raging with great sex appeal, while same-city residents Jobber have taken the genre apart to rearrange it in their own way. Louisiana band Cashier are getting frictive with the fuzz, while Her New Knife have introduced the internet generation to the grime and grace of grunge, and Texas underground legends Trauma Ray offer a sprawling sonic centrepiece.
Read on for our full host of recommendations below.
Five new artists for fans of Nirvana:
Her New Knife
The Mistki-backed Her New Knife might be referenced in passing as a shoegaze band, but their murky melodies and moan-droan monotone often spiral into a grunge-adjacent lobby not too far from the artful whims and whispers of Nirvana’s ‘Marigold’.
Their 2024 EP, Chrome is Lullaby, seems internally entrenched by the usage of guitars at the heart of the project, as the instrument shudders with the same timbre of Pat Smear’s staunch additions. And, with the help of They Are Gutting a Body of Water on the second version of ‘Kittyriff’, the track may as well have been lifted from the late 1980 Seattle grunge scene.
Her New Knife might just have a bit more media literacy than the late Cobain; while he might’ve been an MTV mogul, these guys are Snapchat superstars.
Cashier
A cluster of high-voltage singles from 2023 and 2024 was, prior to this year, the only online proof that this Louisiana band existed. Now, they’re taking the year by storm with news of their first EP, The Weight, which is headed by two sure-fire singles, the clangy, catchy ‘Like I Do’, and ‘Part From Me’, introduced online with the truism, “Rock and roll is epic”.
Cashier never drops the energy, as there’s a passion in the middle of the aggressive guitars, which are always working overtime to prove their use beneath Kylie Gaspard’s emotive, gritty vocal delivery. There’s bound to be a sample of amp feedback in a Cashier song, which means you know they’re on the right track; Cobain would’ve loved this band, and you should too.
Jobber
You might have to stretch your imagination a little further for this one, but there’s something in Jobber’s aura that makes me instantly equate them with the grunge superheroes. Perhaps it’s the way they call themselves a “disgraced rock and roll band”, or maybe it’s the loud colours and razor-sharp vision of their latest, and only album, Jobber To The Stars, but it’s underground and delectable in the very same way.
Sure, Jobber expand pop inflexion further than Nirvana ever did, but give ‘Pillman’s Got a Gun’ a spin and tell me you don’t want to move your body in the same way that you do when Nirvana’s ‘Heart-Shaped Box‘ comes on. They’ve got a similar energy, sitting at the two ends of the vocal spectrum.
Plus, ‘Million Dollar Man’ has the same frenetic energy as some of the rockier Nirvana cuts. They’re a criminally underrated band, to say the least.
Trauma Ray
The Texan band introduced their 2026 EP, Carnival, with the succinct promise of a “tight parade of brooding shoegaze cuts”. More than that, the work of Trauma Ray teeters between heavier, Deftones-adjacent noise and the beloved grunge of Nirvana. At the best of times, their work is atmospheric, led by distortion, and though it doesn’t have the stand-out vocals of Cobain’s distinct coo, the soundscape traverses many of the same roads.
Grimey yet well-grounded, Trauma Ray presents a thwacking wall of sound that never feels too heavy, but guides us into the dark places and lets us see their light. On the echoey vastness of ‘Clown’, they sing laconically, “What a funny face, just another waste, who turned out the lights inside?” You’d be mad not to see the echo there with Nirvana’s “With the lights out, it’s less dangerous…”
Trophy Wife
Brooklyn sweetheart’s Trophy Wife have long been a favourite of mine, so it’s no surprise they head up this list. Their latest offering, the single ‘So Hard’, is an abrasive, breathless examination of shame and power, while last year’s album Get Ugly is a no-skip project drenched in sweat, scuzz and sex appeal.
They also play a fearless live show; just check out their recent Audiotree performance, which contains the ruthless rendition of ‘Leech’, which sees McKenzie Iazzetta devolve into shrieks, hugging her fretboard on the floor of the recording studio. The bass is unrelenting, and the drums are unforgiving, but a silver heart of catchy pop sensibility serves the work on a silver platter. Give them a spin or two, and you’ll be singing the choruses back to me with the same devotion as all those Nevermind essentials.
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