@Jan Martincek

Lesser-known gems and crucial album tracks. Our editors regularly update this playlist—if you hear something you like, add it to your library.

In the late ’70s, ferocious young bands began stripping punk down, making it even louder and faster and, by the early ’80s, hardcore had spread around the world. With their uncompromising attitude and brutal riffs, bands like Black Flag, Minor Threat, Bad Brains and Agnostic Front launched a revolution, and these ’80s hardcore classics will make you want to get in the pit.

Roughly a century after someone first thought of plugging a guitar into the mains, shaping head-nodding riffs around a big, sing-along chorus remains a very potent way to make life-affirming music. Home to some of today’s most rousing rock and indie anthems, this playlist is your perfect pre- and post-gig soundtrack—songs you’ll love air-guitaring to in your bedroom, chanting along with at festivals and belting out with your friends as you find your way home from a big night out. They’re tunes to make memories to, firing up nostalgia for good times with every play. You won’t just find current classics here—there are plenty of tracks by rock and alternative’s fastest-rising stars too. So dig in and find your next favourite guitar heroes. Our editors regularly refresh this playlist. If you hear something you like, add it to your library.

Everyone feels like they don’t belong at some point or another, and at some point or another, everyone’s right. The trick is finding a place where you can not-belong together. Channelling the spirit of ’90s emo and punk, these are artists who know what it’s like to feel different, but also how to turn that feeling into something positive and inclusive. Our editors update picks here regularly, so if you hear something you like, add it to your library. Then turn it up and let it out.

Just in case anyone needed reminding: rock is alive and well. Every day new bands are taking shape and plugging in. These are the few that are destined for greatness. Formerly The A-List: Rock, this playlist is updated regularly, so if you like a song, add it to your library.

As the 2000s began, hard rock had a nu-metal hangover: Limp Bizkit’s rugged riffage still had teeth, while P.O.D.’s thundering anthems and Papa Roach’s slash-and-burn approach rose to prominence. The genre was given an electrifying creative jolt by Linkin Park, a California group whose hip-hop-tinted take on nu-metal—and frustration-filled lyrics that zeroed in on the pain of personal shortcomings—felt fresh and energetic, not to mention all too relatable to a generation paralysed by post-September 11 uncertainty and turmoil. In fact, although ’90s superstars such as Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers continued to churn out comfort-food hits, a new breed of ambitious hard rockers captured the decade’s winds of change. Muse and My Chemical Romance unleashed heroic glam epics, Evanescence embraced an operatic vocal delivery and radio-ready acts like Shinedown merged unstoppable hooks with roiling emotional angst.

Every punk scene has its personality, but Southern California’s is particularly distinctive, as its geographic sprawl led to regional mini-scenes. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, Los Angeles spawned scrappy bands such as X and Germs, while the more buttoned-up Orange County became a hardcore mecca and punk incubator for the rip-roaring Adolescents, surf-rock-inspired Agent Orange and the frenetic Vandals. As SoCal punk evolved in the ’80s and ’90s, the scene settled into a brawny, hardcore-based sound that was faster and more aggressive. Ground zero was Epitaph Records: founded in 1980 by Brett Gurewitz, the label was the home of NOFX, Guttermouth and Gurewitz’s own Bad Religion.