Rock is not dead, but it is not in charge either. An honest look at a genre that keeps growing its streams while losing its grip on the culture.
From a Fort Greene basement to Saturday Night Live, Geese are the most recent New York band to cross from independent obscurity to mainstream fame.
From SummerStage and Celebrate Brooklyn to Pier 17 and Hudson Yards, the 2026 summer rock and indie festival calendar across Manhattan and Brooklyn.
From Verboden in May to Khatsahlano in July, the Vancouver festival calendar for rock and indie in 2026.
From Hotel2Tango to Studio PM, Montreal's producers, engineers and string arrangers quietly shaped some of alt rock's most influential albums, from Arcade Fire and The National to Sarah McLachlan and Frank Ocean.
An explorer's guide to the small clubs and music halls keeping Boston's indie scene alive in 2026: The Sinclair, The Middle East, Lizard Lounge, Brighton Music Hall, O'Brien's Pub, and The Lilypad.
A federal radio quota, a small Toronto label, a Montreal recording studio in a former garment loft, and a juried prize designed to ignore sales numbers, four pieces of infrastructure that turned a mid-sized country into the gravitational center of English-language indie. The pieces still exist. The result no longer does.
The single that made R.E.M. globally famous is also the gravity well that kept them from escaping mainstream expectations. A diagnosis, not a takedown.
