Narrow Head

Heavy bands don’t always get credit for their pop music bonafides, but Narrow Head are one of today’s best pop bands. This Texas outfit aren’t really a pop band per se—their songs have so many layers of pummeling hard rock guitars that they’d give the infamously dense Be Here Now a run for its money—but they have an impressive sixth sense when it comes to pop hooks. Their songs are packed with so much intoxicating force that it would make even the most sane, sober person want to joyfully punch a hole through a wall, but frontman Jacob Duarte dishes out catchy, crushingly beautiful vocal melodies as if his sole purpose is to break your heart, sew it back together and send you back into the moshpit more amped than you were before. – Lizzie Manno