10 modern bands and artists that sound oddly nostalgic
Nostalgia. That double-edged sword that bands sometimes get right, but more often than not mess up. How fickle the music business can be.
There are a lot of bands out there who thrive on the nostalgia which is embedded in their sound. Look at the Oasis reunions for example, as stadiums flooded with young and old are all united in this decades old music. It’s great to listen to, but at the same time, no one is standing in that crowd hoping that Oasis will release new music.
A lot of older bands play into nostalgia; however, there are some modern bands who also have a sound which feels as though it belongs about 20 years in the past. The truth is, this can be a good thing and a bad thing, some bands sound nostalgic because they have tapped into something hidden, other bands sound nostalgic because they’re ripping other bands off.
Here are ten of those modern bands that have an oddly nostalgic sound to them.
10 bands that sound strangely nostalgic:
Parcels
The Australian outfit, Parcels, have recently become your favourite weed-smoking partygoer’s favourite band, and they have achieved such an honoured feat by producing the kind of funk-infused rock that it is nearly impossible to hate.
For that reason alone, it has the patchouli-scented waft of 1970s brilliance. Whether it is the gently poised guitars or the organic bounce of the rhythm section, it is difficult not to reach for your lava lamps and begin an evening of Nixon-bashing fun. ‘Tieduprightnow’ might be their biggest track, but anything on their 2025 release LOVED will have you heading back five decades in an instant.
Wednesday
When I first put Wednesday’s new album, Bleed, on the record player, I was utterly dumbstruck by how familiar they sounded. Not just that they had clearly been wildly influenced by grunge, but it was a very specific type of grunge sound. Wednesday sounded like they were about to headline the high school prom of just about every half-decent teen comedy in the 1990s.
Think 10 Things I Hate About You and you’ll be halfway there. That’s not to discredit the group, in fact, it is why their album has been on repeat since it came out. They have more guts than a teen movie might suggest and their lyrical craft is far superior, but there is a distinct tone that is simply impossible to ignore. And nor would you want to.
The Sheepdogs
Grab your aviators, open the door to your nearest muscle car and start heading down the long road of nostalgia. The Canadian rock band feel about as close to Buffalo Springfield as we have had in a very long time. The group are well-rounded in the right places yet shaggy enough to keep lovers of straight-up ’70s classic rock entertained.
Powerhouse riffs, the odd noodling solo, a gravel-toned vocal and enough petrol-propelled songmanship to keep any diehard rock fan entertained – they even love a mellotron or two – but with some funk leanings to boot, The Sheepdogs are about to be your dad’s new favourite band.
Panda Bear
Now, if you put on Panda Bear in front of a room of millennials, then there is a good chance his unique sounds will bring a sense of nostalgia all on their own. The musician has long since cultivated a group of fans dedicated to his output, but his most recent record, Sinister Grit, is a thing of genuine beauty, and will have a whole new generation of listeners in his grip.
The album feels like it has been plucked directly from the mind of Brian Wilson. There is no doubt that the Beach Boys mastermind would find this latest release a wonderful extension of the legacy he left behind. Breathtaking harmonies are undercut by a chugging backbeat that allows the record to swell and recede like the California waves. An essential listen.
Sam Fender
There is no easier selection for this list than that of everybody’s favourite Geordie (sorry, Sting), Sam Fender. The singer-songwriter has long since been compared to War on Drugs, but the real comparison is to ‘The Boss’, Bruce Springsteen.
Whether it is the vocals that seem to pull tight like the ropes on the quayside or the misty-eyed quality of tears on the Tyne, it is difficult not to equate Fender’s stories of modern-day life in a world that has forgotten its inhabitants with the great Springsteen. Add to this his guitar tone and crystal production, and you have something very close to Springsteen in his heyday.
Greta Van Fleet
A lot of the time, when a band sounds nostalgic, it’s because they are able to tap into something which awakens something buried within you. It’s not that they sound like a specific band or period, but their music taps into a memory of a memory, something that makes you pine for youth and yet also feel excited about the present. Then there are other times when a band sounds nostalgic purely because they’re ripping off another band who were making music before them. Greta Van Fleet, unfortunately, falls into the latter category.
This isn’t the first critique of Greta Van Fleet with someone saying they’re a Led Zeppelin rip-off, and it won’t be the last. Fleet have the nostalgia factor going for them because they’re playing a worse and rehashed version of something which was cutting edge 60 years ago. “He borrowed it from somebody I know very well!” Commented Robert Plant when discussing the lead singers vocal style, “But what are you going to do? That’s OK.”
RAYE
Enough of the negativity, let’s focus on someone who does nostalgia well. RAYE’s influence is pretty clear, her music is a beautiful embodiment of funk, soul and jazz influences from years past, and those influences bleed through into her sound which make for an incredibly nostalgic listen. However, while there is certainly nostalgia embedded into RAYE’s sound, her music could never be confused with somebody else’s.
Those influences are worn on her sleeve, but the singer rolls those sleeves up, ensuring that the by-product of that influence remains unique. Take her new song, ‘WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!’ for instance. That chorus is reminiscent of songs from years past, and yet her vocal delivery, the speed of the verses, and the haphazard structure of different sections in the track make for a totally new style of music that still feels familiar.
Hutch
A lot of bands lean into psychedelia because it feels like, in doing so, they will make something equally modern and nostalgia-driven. When you have a genre of music which relies on being surreal and strange, the criteria are relatively open-ended, and a lot of artists try to take advantage of that. However, psychedelic fans are smarter than just wanting something experimental these days, and Hutch are a great example of a band who deliver.
Let’s take their song ‘Ice On The Lake’ as an example. The chorus of that song, with the harmonies and huge guitar sounds has an incredibly nostalgic feel, one where I pine for a time I wasn’t even here for. However, their chorus, with their use of changing rhythm and interesting vocal structure mean that the song feels modern at the same time. These aren’t a band who lean on nostalgia, instead, there are just elements of it embedded within their style.
Big Thief
Does it technically count as nostalgia if music feels timeless? I don’t know what Big Thief are putting into these songs, I don’t know what their ritualistic writing process must be, but every album they’ve released has something embedded within it that accompanies me on my best and worst days, that makes me pine for the past while looking forward to the future.
Their newest record continues to dance along this time-resistant tightrope. Songs like ‘Los Angeles’ and ‘Grandmother’ belong in the fields of Woodstock and wireless bluetooth headphones, they don’t subscribe to a time period, and in that sense feel both behind the times and ahead of anything in the industry simultaneously. What a talent, what a joy.
Fontaines DC
This might be a biased one, and it might be pretty rich asking you to “stay with me” by the time you’ve reached the last entry on this article, but there is something about Fontaines DC that takes me back to my youth. Specifically with the song ‘Favourite’ on their most recent album, that song, despite not resembling anything I used to listen to when I was young, has an odd nostalgic feeling about it.
The moment those lines “Did you know I could claim the dreamer from the dream?” pierce through my speakers, I’m back in the same nightclubs I used to visit when I was 16, I’m throwing drinks around and dreaming of being a rockstar once again. Don’t ask me where the nostalgia in this song comes from, I don’t know, I just know that it’s there.
