Rolling Stone
Contact Rolling Stone by Email View all posts by Rolling Stone June 15, 2026
Joseph Okpako/WireImage; Christopher Polk/Billboard; Joshua Applegate/WireImage We’re halfway through 2026, and it’s already been a great year for music. The biggest news has got to be the return of BTS, who showcased their Korean roots with the excellent Arirang. But they weren’t the only major act making a fresh breakthrough. Harry Styles dropped some intimate disco kicks, Robyn returned with the sexcellent, grown-up Sexistential, Noah Kahan made good on his folk-hero promise, and Olivia Rodrigo conjured the New Wave gods. There’s something exciting happening in every genre: Ella Langley delivered a country landmark with her smash second album, Jill Scott reclaimed the title of R&B queen, Puerto Rican rapper Alvaro Diaz upped his game with the masterful, mind-bending Omakase, and Slayyyter threw a killer electro-sleaze party. We got hip-hop gems from Baby Keem and MIKE, metal redemption from Neurosis, and indie-rock epiphanies from Ratboys. All that, and summer is just getting started.
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Angine de Poitrine, ‘Vol II’
This Quebec duo—shrouded in polka dots and playing rhythm-heavy microtonal math rock—became viral sensations in March, thanks to a video of bassist-guitarist Khn de Poitrine (he plays a double-necked axe strung with both setups) and drummer Klek de Poitrine demolishing a half-hour set. But their second full-length delivers on the hype with wit and verve, with cuts like the woozy yet propulsive “Mata Zyklek” and the speedy “Yor Zarad” showcasing the pair’s ability to combine the disparate weirdnesses of prog, punk, and guitar heroism into giddy mini-epics.–Maura Johnston
