@Emma-Lee Montalbano

Discover new music from artists we think you'll like. Refreshed every Friday.

The tracks you can’t get enough of lately, all in one place. Updated as you listen.

The songs you love. The more you use Apple Music, the better the mix. Refreshed every Tuesday.

Whether it’s a weekday morning or Saturday night, get going with this personalized mix of upbeat music. Refreshed every Monday.

Songs to help you relax and unwind. Updated every Sunday.

Depending on your vantage, the 2010s were the decade where alternative went pop, or pop went alternative. As seasoned acts like Coldplay continued to evolve with the times, an emergent breed of alt-rock acts—Imagine Dragons and AWOLNATION among them—retrofitted angsty bluster for a post-EDM universe. At the same time, the likes of Lorde, Halsey, and Billie Eilish forged the model for a new kind of pop star more spiritually in tune with the outsider ethos of alternative music than the upbeat energy of Top 40 radio. However, veteran rockers like Foo Fighters and The Black Keys ensured that loud guitars still had a place in the alt-nation, while a growing cadre of suspender-sporting reactionaries—Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers, Of Monsters and Men—steadfastly rejected the technological advances of the era to embrace the timeless sound of foot-stomping folk.

Bold, epic, and eclectic, this playlist collects recent indie rock and pop at its most anthemic—in other words, songs that give you a swallow-the-sun feeling, letting you know you're alive. Our editors update these selections regularly. If you like a track, add it to your library.

Since forging Tame Impala from his Perth home in 2007, Kevin Parker has become an in-demand architect of everything from crunchy psych to snappy pop. After communing with effects pedals and shaggy ’60s influences on his early releases—observe the mind-bending contours of 2010’s “Solitude Is Bliss” and “Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind?”—he leveled up to synths on 2012’s <i>Lonerism</i>, yielding the romantic lament “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” and the classic-rock strut of “Elephant” among the Beatles-y fantasia “Apocalypse Dreams.” That still didn’t fully foreshadow 2015’s <i>Currents</i>, a funk-driven dance odyssey that felt downright transcendent in the soul-searching “The Less I Know the Better” and the mantra-like “Let It Happen.” Big-ticket collabs followed, but Parker has continued to follow his own muse on Tame records, slipping into Quincy Jones territory on 2019’s “Borderline” and plunging into the past both sonically and emotionally on 2020’s “Lost in Yesterday.” Yet, no matter how elaborate he gets as a self-producing multi-instrumentalist, Parker brings humble humanity to his cosmic daydreams via questioning themes and that soft vocal approach.