Top 10 Artists to Watch in 2026

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January 9, 2026

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It’s that time of year again- the beginning. And in the beginning of the year we always like to spotlight Artists to Watch and 2026 promises to be overflowing with new, ascending and/or generational type talents. Janky Smooth sole mission is to turn you on to artists you may or may not heard of yet. To put a face and a name to the music and to try to be one of the first to take notice of that diamond in the ruff when the first band of the night takes the stage. Here are some bands and artists we’ve spotlighted that we expect to take the next step in their careers…

in alphabetical order

Béton Armé

Béton Armé represented a strange phenomenon in underground punk on their come-up. Hailing from Montreal, they were one of a few bands playing skinhead Oi! in French. Along with Rixe, they would play underground shows for Nacho Corrupted and Nothingless Booking for the longest time, generating hype as one of the more energetic, chaotic, and hard-hitting international acts. Then something happened. They took a divergent route, landing on mainstream punk lineups like Punk Rock Bowling. Béton Armé became one of the few underground gems to be chosen to move onto larger ambitions. Today, they’re at the peak level an underground punk band can reach, about to burst through the glass ceiling and capture a larger audience than ever before in 2026.

What is the source for so much momentum coming into 2026? It’s their 2025 album Renaissance that landed them on numerous top ten lists here at Janky Smooth and beyond. The album is rugged, gritty, rowdy, and just cool. You can feel a certain street-wise sentiment in the tone that transcends any sort of language barrier.

Along with Rixe, Béton Armé are the top stars of the international punk scene in Los Angeles. We’re very picky with who we embrace, and those two bands somehow turned Oi! into something accessible and danceable to people with no punk background at all. When you look into the scene that spawned Béton Armé, you get a much deeper understanding of skinheads’ impact on the world. Montreal has a vibrant Oi! scene and so does Paris, and Montreal should be proud of how far their hometown heroes are about to ascend in 2026.

Castle Rat

Capturing every metalheads’ fantasies, Castle Rat has turned gaming, larping, and speculative fiction into its heaviest incarnation. With a lead singer who jumps off any social media feed, Castle Rat and Riley Pinkerton were destined to make the music community dream bigger.
With breaks in singing to do battle with demons, plague vendors shredding, and epic swashbuckling, a Castle Rat show lets fans indulge in their love of comic art. It’s rare that bands like these offer so much more than the live antics, but Castle Rat rocks your medieval socks off with their 2025 album, “The Bestiary“. They play vintage heavy rock and roll doom riffs but with a vocal that splices siren vibes with classic American gypsy rock singers like Stevie Nicks.

Everyone saw the ascent of Castle Rat coming when their concept first invaded your social media feed. It was so obviously brilliant, heavy metal was all in wait for them to land their first big tour. Now, they’re set to open for two of the biggest metal bands around, Amon Amarth and Metalocalypse’s Dethklok.

Cosmic Joke

With the resurgence of hardcore in recent years and the current growth of Oi and street punk, it seems that the sound of 90’s skate-punk has fallen deeply out of favor amongst younger generations. While skate-punk bands of that time like Bad Religion and NOFX were leagues more popular than Sick Of It All or Madball for example, the two styles of punk music have completely traded places in popularity since then. Cosmic Joke is on a mission to flip this greater trend and turn punk rock into party music again; a bold and ambitious, yet deeply important goal for the greater scene. Cosmic Joke wants to bring dancing back to the mosh pit, and ska back to the hardcore scene.

Cosmic Joke’s vocalist Mac Miller (Yes, that’s his name) performs with a snarling attitude that really brings rebellion back to the forefront of punk music. They absolutely wear their influences on their sleeves and proudly declare the artists they’re influenced by; especially with their recent “Welcome To LA” EP featuring covers of SoCal classic punk legends like Bad Religion and Agent Orange, and their recent cover set of songs from the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series at the annual Twitchfits Halloween cover show at 1720 Warehouse.

If you’ve been frequenting hardcore shows at all over the past two years, chances are high that you’ve seen Cosmic Joke as the first band on a lineup or at the very least seen them on fliers. With the carefree 90’s skate-punk attitude that they bring to their performances and with how curated their pool of influences are, 2026 is about to see Cosmic Joke not only jump up from being the lowest band on hardcore lineups, but also transcend the scene altogether by playing with punk legends and exposing those elderly audiences to the current scene. They’re easily one of the most important punk bands in shaping the future of the genre currently, and you definitely want to see them on smaller hardcore bills while you still can.

Die Sexual

Die Sexual is a baby- a lustful and punishing baby. DieSexual is the name of the youngest child spawned by Anton and Rosselinni Floriano. The exact origin story is still being written since Die Sexual’s rise in 2025 was sudden. The backbone of Blacklight Odyssey- Anton Floriano married his prolific output of music and sound design to his naturally gifted wife, Rosselinni at the end of 2024 to create the new family name, Die Sexual- people took notice immediately. With a perfectly crafted EBM/dark wave sound, they were invited on tour with My LIfe With Thrill Kill Kult at the end of 2025 and have a short Spring tour of the West Coast and Texas already planned for 2026. Their music explores taboo and desire, normalizes perversion and domination and it makes you dance- they have put out a good amount of music in a short period of time and I fully expect something new for this year.

femtanyl

While many would argue that 2025 was one of the biggest years for hyperpop in the mainstream with Charli XCX’s “Brat” album still dominating the charts and Addison Rae’s debut being at the top of many AOTY lists, the genre seemed to be in a bit of a lull or identity crisis for a while. Is hyperpop just a term used for pop stars that incorporate more experimental electronic-based production? Is it a specific form of production used by DJ’s who blend IDM, happy hardcore, noise, ambient, and bubblegum pop? I don’t think anybody has a definitive answer, but one thing about the genre is for certain; femtanyl IS hyperpop and hyperpop IS femtanyl.

While they have seen cult status success with the onslaught of singles they’ve released over the past 2 years, we have yet to see a proper release from femtanyl. Their unique sound of combining drum n bass elements with hyperpop had a spotlight moment with their collaborative tracks on Danny Brown’s newest album Stardust, bringing entirely new eyes to the duo. This is just the start, however. The audience at Danny Brown’s recent show at The Bellwether was going just as wild for openers femtanyl and Underscores as they were for the headliner. Their discography is mostly currently scattered amongst singles and some deeper research is required to explore their music, but their debut album is about to be absolutely massive considering the fanbase they’ve already cultivated for themselves. If you feel a bit disengaged with hyperpop due to its prominence in the mainstream and focus on pop star idolatry lately, femtanyl is here to bring the freaks back to the dancefloor and the edge back to hyperpop.

Haywire

If you were following hardcore music or the Oi! scene at all in the past year, you should know who Haywire is by now. Between their historical tour that covered all 50 states within 3 months and their recent headlining performance at For The Children Boston with Dicky Barrett from The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Haywire is on their way to becoming one of the biggest bands in alternative rock music as a whole with their unique brand of melodic hardcore. There’s good reason that online debates surrounding their collaboration with antivaxxer Dicky Barrett and their use of a cartoonish Iron Cross caricature pop up so frequently; they’re growing at exponential speed and controversy always follows the new leaders of any scene. Haywire is leading it now.

While their debut album “CONDITIONED FOR DEMOLITION” was built around no-nonsense balls to the wall Boston hardcore, their newest “SHIRTS VS. SKINS” split EP with No Guard is much more melodic and poppy; and new doors are already opening up for them as they are scheduled to tour with both Dropkick Murphys and No Pressure in 2026. This is no indication of them becoming soft or selling out however, as the anthemic nature of these new songs invites everybody to pile on stage to sing along. Haywire has already built a reputation for having the craziest mosh pits and an insane amount of crowd-participation at their shows, but this momentum of chaos is only building as they refine their tough-guy Boston image into something more accessible to punk fans outside of the hardcore scene.

We at Janky Smooth are always running into people who say they wish they could have seen Turnstile in smaller venues before they blew up, and Haywire is destined to follow a similar trajectory of success with how passionate their live performances are. Don’t miss out again. Haywire is about to take over the world.

Home Front

People are excited about Home Front– they are militant, melodic and very musical… A brand new, shiny, authentic post punk band that rips on string instruments and synths, equally. 2025 was a GREAT year for the Edmonton post punk outfit. Their sophomore studio album “Watch It Die” made many year end lists, including our own and are currently supporting that album on a headlining tour across Europe. Their songs strike a contemporary nerve in an archetypical package of camo and berets and battle fatigues. They are doing emotional battle on the socio-political front as so many of their predecessors before them have and we look forward to watching them support “Watch it Die” in 2026 and watching the movement grow.

Lip Critic

If you’ve ever seen Lip Critic live then you know why they’re on this list. And the only possible way Lip Critic lives up to the buzz surrounding their live shows is if they play more of them. In 2025 Lip Critic went on tour with MSPAINT as the main support act and if their stop at The Lodge Room told me anything is that very few headlining acts should want to follow Lip Critic on stage at any time, for any reason or in any capacity. The wave of sound and energy that emits from Lip Critic when they’re on stage hit me hard and fast and completely filled me up to the point that there wasn’t much left for anyone else when they were done.

In 2024 Lip Critic came out with their second full length album, “Hex Dealer” which channeled both Atari Teenage Riot and the Beastie Boys- a true descent into madness that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Lip Critic followed that up with a split single in 2025, “Mirror Match”/”Second Life”. That’s GOT to mean a new full length in 2026?

Marie Davidson

You ever go to a show to see an artist and just by the vibe are able to envision their takeover of a subculture? That was the case for Marie Davidson’s appearance at Always and Forever 2024. She commands a stage with beats and cadence that are completely all her own in a scene of so many similar sounding acts. There is only one Marie Davidson, and just like Janky Smooth was able to see Los Angeles embracing Adult. into an act that defined our post punk scene, Marie Davidson is onto a similar fate for her impact in Los Angeles.

Hailing from Canada, Marie started her grind in 2015 and is finally seeing the scene open up to her because she’s exactly what underground dance music needs right now. Her 2025 album, City of Clowns, was a transcendent work that made listeners think and move at the same time.

Marie Davidson is simply the music scene’s spirit animal going into 2026. So fierce, so inspiring, so resonant with audiences old and new, she can get anyone to move their bodies and feel her words because you can tell she really means it when she sings and calls upon an audience to follow her lead and take her insight. She is the commanding force music is lacking these days. Where some electronic artists tend to intellectualize their work too deeply, Marie’s art is grounded in our material bodies, wanting us to dance and burn calories while we do it. This is music to dance yourself into the best version of you and in 2026, we’re here for it.

Madeline Goldstein

2024 was the year that Madeline Goldstein released her transformational EP, Other Word. That release was a statement at a time when a lot of bands in synth pop and dark wave were also making statements in what we’ve dubbed the post pandemic/post punk era. With a voice that can feel both feather-soft and devastating, Goldstein writes like someone who understands that the smallest moments often carry the deepest weight.

You could see the LA based musician and songwriter bopping around the city at various events, making her presence known like a good future star should but Goldstein has been relatively quiet since then and people maybe forgot that she is a rising force in independent music. It feels like it’s time to remind us. I have it on good authority that Goldstein is set to release her 2nd full length in 2026 at Infinite Power Studios, which is becoming the recording den of choice for goth and goth adjacent artists. Madeline is known for crafting emotionally rich songs that sit at the crossroads of many genres. We have no doubt that the release will add more ascension to her career in 2026.

Lip Critic, Home Front, Die Sexual and Madeline Goldstein by Danny Baraz
Béton Armé, Castle Rat, and Marie Davidson by Robert Shepyer
Cosmic Joke, femtanyl, and Haywire by Danny Ryan