Earlier this year, a new band called the Velvet Sundown released a song that sounded like it was made by a Benadryl-drowsed peer of the Eagles and Led Zeppelin. It earned more than 3 million streams, a rare feat for an unknown band. Except it wasn’t actually a band—it was (according to an official statement) a “synthetic music project” that had been composed and voiced using AI.
This development raised a sad question: Is rock and roll so stagnant that a bland computer imitation could do a better job than real groups?
The answer is no—young artists are still moving the genre forward in electrifying ways. Take Geese, a quartet of Brooklynites who were signed by a record label just after they graduated high school. Outlets such as The New York Times have since endorsed them, and one track from the solo album of the lead singer, Cameron Winter, became a TikTok hit, garnering more than 7 million Spotify plays. The band’s new release, Getting Killed, stages an intense and unpredictable melee between punk and free jazz. It’s the result of humans collaboratively making decisions that no one else would make, just because they feel like it—an album that seems capable of piercing through even the most serious cases of burnout and brain fog.
The members of Geese are part of the first generation of music nerds to be raised with streaming services at their disposal, which gives them something in common with AI: They’ve studied tons of old records and can raid all of them. Geese’s songs blend Frank Zappa–style zaniness, the simmering swagger of the Rolling Stones, the jumpy surrealism of Pixies, and many other influences. But no track on Getting Killed lacks for WTF is this? novelty. The rock references are like the acquaintances who populate your otherwise-baffling dream.
What first hooked me was the music’s strong waft of Radiohead. Though that’s one of the most overused comparisons in rock, in this case it’s warranted on both the sonic and spiritual levels. Like Thom Yorke, Winter sings in a way that calls to mind the tragic arc of a balloon deflating in midair. Both bands specialize in grooves that feel bulbous and fetid: kick drums gulping with fear, flickering guitars evoking lantern light. It’s the sound of a dangerous spelunking into the subconscious.
But whereas Radiohead’s explorations lead to shivery-beautiful pop payoffs, Geese is more interested in rawk: momentum, drama, well-juxtaposed noise. Geese uses time signatures that you need a degree from Berklee to understand. It loves a jump scare. The panning, wah-wah guitars that open the album create a funky equilibrium that feels like it could go on forever—but the chorus smashes the arrangement into a wall. A trombone squawks, and Winter screams, over and over, “There’s a bomb in my car!”
What’s going on with this guy? On “Husbands,” Winter seems to warn against trying to interpret him: “I’ll repeat what I say / But I’ll never explain.” Nevertheless, the music and words add up to a recognizable character. Sometimes Winter sounds like Chewbacca doing opera. Sometimes his voice bifurcates into a falsetto and a burp, Exorcist-possession-style. While his band’s rhythms are humping and short, he likes to sing sustained, smearing notes. He sounds off-balance, groggy, and barely sane, like someone who’s stumbled onto the street after three days of doomscrolling.
This hint of meaning—which is really a search for meaning—coheres the music’s sprawl. On some songs, Winter chats with god and angels, seeking a cause to believe in. On others, he’s looking for commitment in a no-strings-attached universe. The astoundingly chaotic title track finds Winter complaining about not being able to hear himself speak over the blather of “everybody in the world.” In a bruised, majestic crescendo, he eventually confesses to “getting killed by a pretty good life.” He captures what it’s like to feel unfulfilled in a land of unlimited convenience and choice: weird and pathetic.
Geese isn’t the only one making disorienting music for disorienting times. It’s part of a wave of rock bands using itchy-scratchy rhythms and wild-eyed lyrics to express the frustration of having one’s own mind colonized by content (Black Midi, Model/Actriz, Wet Leg). Similar impulses course through other genres, like hyperpop. Even frenetic, stylistically unstable rappers such as Playboi Carti seem to be doing what Geese is doing: fighting fire with fire in the attention wars. “I think we’re just trying to match the world we live in, in terms of the feeling,” Winter told the newsletter Blackbird Spyplane. “I don’t think we’re really so interested in making music that’s an escape.”
Indeed: Geese listeners will sometimes be in need of escape from their own headphones. The band’s gee-whiz musicality and performative randomness can grate in the stretches of the album where Winter doesn’t seem sure of what he’s trying to convey (his lyrical fixation on certain words, like horse or pants, has the air of filler, or maybe a joke on the audience). Certain songwriting tricks—such as restarting a track midway through in a new tempo—are a bit repetitive. To become as great as its influences, Geese will need to further sharpen the ideas it has surfaced. In the meantime, it has achieved something miraculous for 2025: suggesting a future to look forward to.
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