If you like The Strokes, try these 6 artists

You have played "Reptilia" until the bassline lives in your hands. You know every word of Is This It, and you have already tried the bands every playlist hands you next. This list goes a step or two further: older records the sound grew out of, a New York cousin, a bandmate's side project, and a Delhi band you can stream tonight.

The Strokes came out of New York with a debut in 2001, two guitars that interlock instead of solo, and a singer who sounds like he is half asleep on purpose. Each pick below scratches one part of that itch. Our picks, no one else's list.

1. The Feelies

The Feelies formed in Haledon, New Jersey, and made Crazy Rhythms in 1980: jittery, tightly wound guitars that never stop strumming, with Glenn Mercer and Bill Million at the centre. Start with "Fa Cé-La". If the Strokes' interlocking guitar lines are the thing you love, this is the older, twitchier version of it.

2. The Walkmen

The Walkmen are a New York band from the same early-2000s moment as the Strokes. Bows + Arrows came out in 2004, and "The Rat" is the song: a drum roll, a guitar that will not stop, and Hamilton Leithauser shouting like it is the last night of the year. They went on hiatus in 2013, and the records still hold up.

3. The Voidz

Julian Casablancas, the Strokes' singer, also fronts The Voidz, and this is where he goes when he wants to be louder, weirder and less polished. Virtue (2018) is the record to know. Start with "Leave It in My Dreams", the most direct song on it and the one that sounds closest to home. Our artist page for him is at /artist/julian-casablancas.

4. Girls

Girls were a San Francisco band led by Christopher Owens, and their 2009 debut Album is a record of sunny hooks with something sad underneath. Start with "Lust for Life". It has the Strokes habit of sounding casual while every part is exactly placed.

5. Parquet Courts

Parquet Courts are Texans who moved to Brooklyn, and Light Up Gold (2013) is two minutes at a time of quick, wry, wiry guitar rock. Start with "Borrowed Time". If you love how the early Strokes records never outstay a song, this is that rule taken to the extreme.

6. Superfuzz

The home pick. Superfuzz are a rock band from New Delhi, and their catalogue on streaming now runs from a 1999 release through a 2014 release to the four-song Superfuzz EP, out on 16 August 2020. Start with "School" from that EP. If the guitar-band corner of Indian indie has been missing from your playlists, begin here.

Where to go next

Back to the source: the Strokes' ADMC page has everything we have written on them. For more guitars with a slow-burn mood, try our list for Arctic Monkeys fans or the one for Mac DeMarco fans.