‘In Defense of the Genre’: Best Punk & Emo Songs of June

In Defense of the Genre is a column on BrooklynVegan about punk, pop punk, emo, hardcore, post-hardcore, ska-punk, and more, including and often especially the bands and albums and subgenres that weren’t always taken so seriously.

Summer is officially here, it is so hot, and here are 10 new punk songs from the month of June that I highly recommend. But first, some written features, videos, and podcast interviews we ran this past month:

* Pure Noise founder Jake Round picks 5 albums that altered the label’s trajectory

* Turnover breathed new life into Peripheral Vision at its 10th anniversary tour

* 5 best times emo bands went heavy

* What makes Outbreak Fest such a unique music festival

* mewithoutYou‘s Pale Horses at 10

* Why we need to stop asking if Turnstile is still hardcore

* June album reviews: Turnstile, For Your Health, Moving Mountains, Higher Power, Joliette, Sport, Deadguy, Vandoliers, My Point of You, Iron Mind, and View From The Soyuz.

Some new exclusive vinyl we recently launched includes color variants of the 10th anniversary edition of Citizen’s Everybody Is Going To Heaven and the 20th anniversary edition of Minus The Bear’s Menos El Oso; upcoming albums from Modern Life Is War, Drain, Rise Against, Superchunk, La Dispute, Yellowcard, Good Charlotte, and Between the Buried and Me; a new “red smoke” pressing of The Offspring’s Americana, and more.

Head below for my picks of the 10 best songs of June that fall somewhere under the punk umbrella, in no particular order.

Pool Kids – “Easier Said Than Done”

After showing off their emo/math rock chops on their 2018 debut LP Music to Practice Safe Sex To and then solidifying their four-piece lineup and honing their pop sensibilities on their even better 2022 self-titled album, Pool Kids seem poised to be taking another leap on their third album Easier Said Than Done. It’s their first for Epitaph, and the lead single/title track leans even more into pop songcraft than the self-titled did. Its airy vocoder intro has echoes of Billie Eilish or Imogen Heap (or “Kid” by Great Grandpa, who share producer Mike Vernon Davis with Pool Kids), and it gradually evolves into the kind of crashing, climactic, emo-infused rock song that’s become Pool Kids’ calling card. It’s a bold step forward and yet it still sounds like the same band that made “$5 Subtweet.”

The Starting Line – “Sense of Humor”

It’s been my professional opinion for a while now that The Starting Line could come back to make a genuinely great new album. Though they peaked in popularity with their 2002 debut album Say It Like You Mean It, they were creatively on an upwards trajectory that peaked with their third and best album (2007’s Direction). After that, singer Kenny Vasoli continued to push himself to new limits in his post-Starting Line bands Person L and Vacationer, and when The Starting Line did reunite for shows, they played their classic songs with a fresh new perspective that went beyond nostalgia. 2016 saw the release of the very solid three-song EP Anyways, and it’s worth pointing out that they’ve remained tapped in to the current emo scene; openers on recent and/or upcoming shows include The Hotelier, Oso Oso, Microwave, Queen of Jeans, Macseal, Stateside, and other bands who helped push emo forward in the years since TSL last released an album.

Now, 18 years after Direction, The Starting Line are finally set to release a new album, titled Eternal Youth, and lead single “Sense of Humor” is exactly the kind of song I’d hope for them to write in 2025. All the growth that led to the genre-transcendent Direction is present (and further amplified) here, but it also makes a bit of a return to form, embracing the pop punk/emo that Direction shied away from in a way that feels natural. It sounds fresh and resonant in present day, and on top of all that, it’s just a great, catchy Starting Line song that stands tall next to any of their fan favorites.

Moving Mountains – “Everyone Is Happy, and Nothing Is Good”

Moving Mountains slowly fizzled out after releasing their 2013 self-titled album, releasing just two new songs (on a 2015 split with Prawn) and ceasing touring save for a select few shows. But it always felt like an unsatisfying ending because one of those two songs (“Deathless”) was one of the best songs they’d ever released. It felt like an older, wiser, self-assured version of the same band who made a cult classic debut with Pneuma eight years earlier, and it left me wanting more. And now, a full decade later, we finally got more. Moving Mountains returned this past month with Pruning of the Lower Limbs just two weeks after announcing it, and it feels like the logical conclusion of the chapter that began with the self-titled and the Prawn split. The whole record is great and one of its best tracks is “Everyone Is Happy, and Nothing Is Good,” a song that captures everything that’s always been great about this band since day one. Their post-rocky emo has long garnered comparisons to The Appleseed Cast and this song is no exception, but they’ve always made it their own and this is a soaring, triumphant example of exactly how they do it.

Drain – “Nights Like These”

I don’t know if there’s a better visual representation of the dichotomy that defines Drain than the artwork for their new album …Is Your Friend. It depicts a cherubic figure in a shark costume, lounging in a beach chair, with headphones plugged into an ’80s boombox and blood dripping down its chest. There’s an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. It’s so metal and evil but also so welcoming and fun, just like Drain themselves. The California band’s thrash/groove metal-infused hardcore has deservedly gained comparisons to devil horn-wielding giants like Metallica, Slayer, and Pantera over the years, yet Drain are distinctly a hardcore band and their music is for punks, metalheads, and even people who might not otherwise listen to much heavy music. New single “Nights Like These” is about the euphoria of a great live show and how grateful Drain are to get to do this night after night to increasingly large crowds, and vocalist Sammy Ciaramitaro delivers it with clear, shoutalong couplets that make for one of their catchiest songs yet. The riffs are tough as nails, but the overall vibe is positive and uplifting.

Pre-order our exclusive “patina rush splash” vinyl variant of the new Drain album here.

End It – “Pale Horse”

Baltimore’s End It are such an established part of the hardcore scene that it’s almost hard to believe they still haven’t released a full-length album, but it’s true; their first one, Wrong Side Of Heaven, comes out this August via Flatspot. It remains to be seen how the band makes their jump from four-to-six-song, no-filler EPs to a 15-song album, but for now we get our first taste of the LP in the form of the 72-second “Pale Horse.” It’s classic End It–fast-paced fury with a few embellishments sprinkled in like a groove metal breakdown, a couple beastly growls, and literally two seconds of clean vocals–and as always, Akil Godsey’s tuneful shouts make End It stand out from the pack.

My Point of You – “Eviscerate”

It’s been a minute since a DIY emo band has seemingly come out of nowhere as fully-formed as Denton, Texas band My Point of You are on their debut EP This Is My First Heist. They’ve got the delicate guitar work of Texas emo pioneers Mineral, the dual vocals of early Rainer Maria, and a mix of melodic emo and raw screamo that brings to mind current bands like Your Arms Are My Cocoon and awakebutstillinbed. The EP opens with “Eviscerate,” an instantly-satisfying song that breathes new life into comfortingly familiar emo tropes.

Hot Mulligan – “And A Big Load”

As Hot Mulligan’s song titles get even sillier (“Monica Lewinskibidi”???), their music just gets more dead-serious. The first taste of The Sound A Body Makes When It’s Still–the anticipated followup to 2023’s profile-rising Why Would I Watch–is “And A Big Load,” a soul-baring emo/pop punk song that looks at the consequences of your own actions through a lens of alcohol abuse and suicidal thoughts. Tades Sanville and Chris Freeman deliver some of the most biting emo dual vocals this side of Tell All Your Friends, and every verse, chorus, and bridge is soaked in overly dramatic scream-sung catharsis.

Spite House – “Desert”

If you miss Shed/Floral Green-era Title Fight, you might fid that Montreal’s Spite House are doing a pretty great job of filling that void. After releasing a solid self-titled debut LP on New Morality Zine in 2022, they’ve now signed to Pure Noise for their upcoming sophomore LP Desertion, and lead single “Desert” turns the experience of having a father take his own life into a throat-shredding melodic hardcore anthem. When vocalist/guitarist Max Lajoie screams “I grew up 16 years in a single day,” you feel it in your bones.

Dropkick Murphys – “Who’ll Stand With Us?”

In a year that’s been full of fighting oligarchy, one band who’s been speaking out against billionaires and standing up for the working class at every turn these past few months is Boston Celtic punk heroes Dropkick Murphys. They’ve made headlines for slamming Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and MAGA at their shows, and they’ve also got the new music to back it up. Their pointedly titled 13th album For The People comes out on July 4, and its lead single “Who’ll Stand With Us?” is a rousing anthem powered by sentiments like “The working people fuel the engine while you yank the chain” and “We fight the wars and build buildings for someone else’s gain.” It’s protest punk that goes beyond tired sloganeering, and it’s not just the message that earns it a spot on this list. This feels like one of the most spirited Dropkick Murphys singalongs in a while.

VIAL – “Creep Smoothie”

VIAL’s 2024 album Burnout spent 19 minutes ranging from aggressive punk to power pop with plenty of other things in between, and their new single “Creep Smoothie” leans further than ever into the former. The band says it was “inspired by heavier punk and hardcore projects that we love right now” and that it’s “ushering [the band] into a new era of VIAL,” and it is indeed one of their heaviest songs to date. It’s an angry, scathing takedown of a creepy dude with a lyrical bluntness that hearkens back to the original riot grrrl era. In the spirit of that movement, it turns a playful metaphor into pure rage.

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In an effort to cover as many bands as possible, I try to just do one single per album cycle in these monthly roundups, so catch up on previous months’ lists for even more:

* Best Songs of May

* Best Songs of April

* Best Songs of March

* Best Songs of February

* Best Songs of January

For even more new songs, listen below or subscribe to our playlist of punk/emo/hardcore/etc songs of 2025.

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Read past and future editions of ‘In Defense of the Genre’ here.

Browse our selection of hand-picked punk vinyl.