15 hotshot NYC guitarists that prove the Big Apple’s still got some bite – from the Rat Queen to the most-hyped indie band on the planet
Featuring Castle Rat, Geese, the Lemon Twigs and all kinds of bands you need to hear
Nashville, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Detroit and Austin definitely have their moments, but there’s no other American music city like New York.
NYC – the home of Guitar World since 1980 – was the cradle of punk and hip-hop, a preferred hub for jazz, new wave and post-punk and the petri dish that spawned a relentless outbreak of gritty, guitar-forward bands, from the Velvet Underground to Sonic Youth, Blondie to Interpol, New York Dolls to the Ramones, Chic to Kiss, Mink DeVille to the Senders, White Lion to Parquet Courts, Television to TV on the Radio. You get the idea.
And while it’s reasonable to argue that NYC, like those other cities, only has its “moments” of greatness (for instance, the punk explosion of the ’70s and the “Class of 2001” with its Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs), it’s safe to say that – based on actionable intel and the new music we’re gloriously subjected to on a near-daily basis – it’s having a genuine moment right now.
Just ask anyone who’s been baffled, bowled over and eventually converted by a Geese, Horsegirl or Castle Rat riff, music video or show.
As the following 15 artists will attest, guitar is alive and well in every corner of the city (OK, mostly in Brooklyn, but who can afford Manhattan?). And speaking of Parquet Courts, when the hell are we getting a new album? But I digress…
1. Gooseberry
It’s a frigid spring morning and, due to a poorly timed pot of coffee, I’m late to my Zoom call with Asa Daniels, the singer/guitarist/sometimes day-to-day manager – the Chief Warrior Officer, if you will – of Brooklyn rock ‘n’ roll band Gooseberry. Fortunately, Daniels is an affable guy, and, not sweating my tardiness, he’s happy to delve into some of the band’s war stories.
“At 1 a.m., we'll get invited out to the owner of some bar’s ranch and they’ll invite the townies,” he says. “Then, all of a sudden we're playing darts – using bows and arrows – in a barn. Those are the types of situations we find ourselves in.”
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Other situations Gooseberry find themselves in is writing riffs in 11/8 and songs in 7/4, largely because of Daniels’ deep jazz roots. He was given At Carnegie Hall by the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane when he was 5, and it changed his life.
“There is a jazz foundation that’s happening there,” he says. “People will come up after the show and be like, ‘You're playing some weird fucking chords up there, man!’ Really, what they're just describing is playing, like, a ninth. It's nothing crazy, but those influences do come out, even if there's heavy distortion on the guitar.”
2. The Thing
When I meet the Thing over Zoom, guitarist Michael Carter is proudly wielding a B.C. Rich Bich, a far cry from the white Ovation Breadwinner he typically plays. The guitar belongs to the Macks, who the Thing are staying with for a few nights while they play some West Coast shows. “The Macks fucking rip,” Carter says.
But the Thing fucking rip, too. Having played more than 300 shows worldwide, the band is tighter than your pants on Thanksgiving, and when they play, they turn their amps up loud.
“There’s a lot of people that are going in the other direction now,” guitarist Jack Bradley says. He’s referring to bands that lean on modelers, which might seem practical in a tightly packed city like New York, but the Thing proudly lug their amps to every gig.
“Sound is fickle,” he says. “When it's going through different tubes, speakers or preamps, it all adds to the character.”
While we’re on the topic of cumbersome equipment, what about capos? “If you think capos are bad, you watch too much YouTube,” Carter says. “Get out of your room and play in a band.”
3. Shower Curtain
It didn’t take Victoria Winter – Shower Curtain's primary songwriter – very long to start writing songs after she first picked up the guitar.
“I think the lack of classical training just made me write my own music as a way to play guitar,” Winter says. “I never really took guitar lessons. At first it was just, like, learning covers; then I just started writing my own music on the guitar, and it just kind of developed as that type of relationship.”
The result is the development of Winter’s unique voice on guitar, one that communicates the vulnerability and sensitivity of similar shoegaze bands like Fleeting Joys.
“I take in from people a lot,” she says. “If someone’s watching me, I want an exchange in a very emotional way. For me, music is much more connection-based than a solo or inward experience.”
4. Horsegirl
The thing about getting old is that you don’t really realize it until one day, you’re 38 and you join a Zoom call where a band of twentysomethings have to explain an Instagram post to you. For me, that band is the Chicago-bred/NYC-based Horsegirl, and the post has something to do with an old meme.
“It’s like, ‘grown ass man got his finger stuck at Chipotle,’” bassist Penelope Lowenstein says. “It’s an old meme from our childhood.”
That easily-remembered moniker – Horsegirl – came to Lowenstein in a dream when she was a teenager. That iteration of the band was much noisier that the version I’m speaking with today
“We had a lot of distortion going on,” guitarist Nora Cheng says. Modern Horsegirl draw on bands like the Velvet Underground, Cheng’s open tunings and Lowenstein’s Fender Bass VI for their minimalistic sound.
“I love, love this instrument. I’d never play regular bass in a trio,” Lowenstein says. “On the higher strings, you can almost play a voicing as if you're playing a riff on the lower strings of a guitar. It gives us a ton of flexibility.”
5. Castle Rat
While it’s true that Castle Rat are technically based in the Large Apple, what’s more important is where vocalist-guitarist Riley Pinkerton (aka the Rat Queen), lead guitarist Franco Vittore (aka the Count) and the rest of the chainmail-wearing, sword-swingin’ metal warriors are trying to take you through their fantastically brimstone-and-Strymon-Sunset-scented stoniness – an enigmatic artistic plane they call “The Realm.”
“The idea behind it is a feeling of collective connectedness, in a way that is flexible across space and time to include everyone,” Pinkerton says. “My goal behind it is to create a place for anyone who’s ever felt like they don’t belong, which is something I struggled with growing up.
My goal behind it is to create a place for anyone who’s ever felt like they don’t belong, which is something I struggled with growing up
Riley Pinkerton
“Usually my way of coping with it was going off into a fantasy world, or making up a game and getting other kids on the playground to be a part of the world. I’m just doing the same shit at 30 years old.”
Last year’s The Bestiary holds dominion through Pinkerton’s swaggering trad-metal chunking, Vittore’s livewire Mixolydian flourishes and wizard-friendly lyricism.
The album just got a wider re-release through Loma Vista, and the band recently hit a big-time metal tour with Dethklok and Amon Amarth. In other words, more fans are heading into “The Realm” than ever before.
6. Pasquale Grasso
During our call, jazz guitarist Pasquale Grasso described to me how he hit the ground running when he moved from Naples, Italy, to NYC in 2009.
“This is a place where there's space for anybody if you want to do anything,” he says. “If you wait for the phone to ring, that's never gonna happen. You can go out and hear somebody almost every single night. That’s how you meet people.”
He was inspired to make the move by his teacher, legendary jazz pianist Barry Harris. “I’ve known him since I was about nine,” Grasso says. “He always talked about New York. Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Elmo Hope – all those guys are from the City. A friend of mine – a great bass clarinet player, Stefano Doglioni; we have a band together – was coming to New York in 2009.
“He asked me and my brother if we wanted to come. I was 19. We went to see a show at Smalls Jazz Club – it was the great piano player, Sacha Perry – and when I was there, I thought that was my home.”
7. Emanuel Casablanca
“I didn’t choose the blues,” Brooklyn native Emanuel Casablanca says. “It kind of chose me.” He’s wary that this idea could come off as cheesy, but when you’re a kid who wants to play guitar and the only lessons you can afford are the free ones from the guy down the street who plays guitar on his porch – and that guy only knows the blues – it’s hard to argue with Casablanca’s logic.
“I wanted to get better, so I just asked him, ‘Can I play with you sometime? Can you show me some stuff?’” he says.
You never get a yes to a question you don’t ask. It’s this philosophy that led Casablanca to not only developing his chops, but also meeting Ronnie Wood, getting a gig playing with Lauryn Hill and ultimately getting a record deal.
“These people were all where I wanted to be,” he says. “My father always said a closed mouth doesn't get fed. I can not say something and not get there, or I can say something and actually have a shot.”
8. Geese
“Playing guitar in Geese is an exercise in shape-shifting. There’s not one set thing that we do,” says Emily Green, lead guitarist in Geese. The hype that surrounded the Brooklynites’ late-2025 record, Getting Killed, was palpable, and for good reason.
It’s a dynamic, relentless guitar-driven rock record with echoes of the Velvet Underground and Television. Endorsements from Patti Smith, Nick Cave and Julian Casablancas have added fuel to extravagant press statements that Geese are here to reanimate rock’s corpse.
Playing guitar in Geese is an exercise in shape-shifting. There’s not one set thing that we do
Emily Green
When the band passed through Detroit last year, Green told me about the first guitar she bought with her own money, the blue-and-silver Reverend Double Agent she still uses.
“The Reverend is a precision machine,” she says. “There’s a lot of good note separation and clarity. I worked a two-week internship at a headphone company called Master & Dynamic. It was a desk job – inventory and admin stuff. I took the money from that to buy the Reverend. I also learned in those two weeks that if I had to work a desk job, I’d really prefer not to because it is mind-numbingly boring.”
What about the job she has now, playing guitar in one of rock’s most exciting bands? “Most jobs are boring, except for this one. This one’s pretty good,” she says.
9. Telescreens
“I’ve just been chasing rock ’n’ roll forever. That’s been my entire life.”
I’m talking with Telescreens’ singer and guitarist Jackson Hamm. He’s telling me about his version of the scene in Almost Famous, when William Miller is given his sister’s old record collection.
What kicked it off was probably Kurt Cobain. He plays with his whole body. He's just pushing this energy
Jackson Hamm
In Hamm’s case, it was his mom’s friend’s boyfriend trying to impress his mom’s friend, and instead of records like the Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out and Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Hamm was gifted records like Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium and Nirvana’s Nevermind.
“What kicked it off was probably Kurt Cobain,” Hamm says. “He plays with his whole body. He's just pushing this energy. I feel like his guitar playing is actually amazing. It gets overlooked because it’s not Eddie Van Halen shred, but it's definitely powerful and incredibly creative.”
As a guitar player, Hamm’s North Stars are Cobain, Joey Santiago and John Frusciante. “When it comes to playing, it's much more about how I'm feeling than the amount of notes that I'm going to play,” he says. “It’s just more about what kind of energy is being emitted than how fast or impressive the part is.”
10. The Lemon Twigs
The Lemon Twigs achieve their mid-’60s garage pop sound – best heard on their just-released album, Look for Your Mind! – by keeping things simple. “We don't really use effects,” guitarist Michael D'Addario says. “I don't even have a boost; I just use the volume. The only pedal Brian really uses is a JangleBox, which is sort of like a compressor.”
Beyond the simplicity helping to add authenticity to their sound, D’Addario says there’s a practicality involved as well. “We just like the idea that we can do a show with whatever,” he says.
“It really does come in handy a lot of the time,” adds Brian D’Addario, Michael’s brother and the band’s other guitarist. “There've been times when we had problems with the van and had to do a show with backline unexpectedly, and it's really nice to not be very reliant on equipment.”
So what does that mean for troubleshooting equipment problems on the road?
“Usually it's a problem with tubes or a cable,” Michael says. “We still manage to have problems just because we're so shoddy about prepping our stuff before we go on the road.” [Laughs]
BTW, if you wonder where the brothers got at least some of their inspiration, head to Spotify or Apple Music and check out pretty much anything by their Manhattan-born-and-bred father, Ronnie D'Addario. The lemon didn’t fall far from the tree. Sorry, we had to say it.
11. Wendy Eisenberg
When Wendy Eisenberg plays guitar, the virtuoso folk-jazz guitarist and composition teacher at the New School in Manhattan isn’t showing off.
“If it sounds like showing off, I've not done my job correctly,” the guitarist says. “I play this complicated stuff for two real reasons. One is that it's incredibly fun to play guitar, and everybody should try to find their own voice on it, because it's like finding your whole voice in the world. The second reason I play like this is because I believe that writing and letting the guitar be your collaborator is like speaking to somebody.”
Eisenberg says that when you finally find that interlocutor, it’s far easier to understand what it is you’re trying to convey.
“That's my relationship to the guitar,” Eisenberg says. “It only sounds dense – or kind of impressive or whatever – because I just wanted to ask it what it thinks a lot.”
12. Mei Semones
Mei Semones’ songs start innocently enough – a shy falsetto on top of absent-minded strumming. That is, until her hand takes off up and down the fretboard as effortlessly and intricately as a spider weaves a web.
There was a jazz program at my high school, and I actually really ended up liking it. Especially coming from playing rock, it was a different way of thinking about music
Mei Semones
The virtuosic jazz-indie fusion guitarist was inspired to pick up the guitar after seeing Back to the Future for the first time. It was the scene where Marty McFly covers Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance in 1955.
“I saw that when I was in middle school and thought it was really cool,” the guitarist says. “I was already playing piano, but I wasn't feeling very connected to it. I felt a connection to the guitar.”
So how do you get from Marty McFly’s rootsy riff in B to jazz fusion?
“It wasn’t really an interest in the genre, but more so that I just wanted to be able to play the instrument more,” she says. “There was a jazz program at my high school, and I actually really ended up liking it. Especially coming from playing rock, it was a different way of thinking about music. From there I just wanted to keep doing it.”
13. Skorts
The Skorts (typically stylized as SKORTS) story begins at a vintage guitar shop in the East Village, when singer Alli Walls came in looking for a pedal.
“I showed her some stuff,” guitarist Char Smith says. “What she was playing on guitar was really cool. It was in some drop tuning. She had just moved to New York and said she was looking to start a band.”
The result is Skorts’ debut LP, Incompletement, a refreshing rock record that places as much emphasis on soaring ’80s pop melodies as it does carefully crafted guitar tones. “And then you run for days / And you run for miles / In the vacant night,” sings Walls on R4DR4M, with a hook that rivals Belinda Carlisle.
“[Alli’s] voice is big enough to be in that environment with a big guitar already,” Smith says. “That’s a lot of the synergy between Alli and me. She likes starting songs that way. We both like a big swing.”
14. Quarters
Rock history is littered with fantastical stories of bands emerging triumphantly from the rubble of adversity with their debut LP or demo tape in hand, and NYC’s Quarters are no exception. Guitarist Jasper Harris tells us a story about a particularly intense mixing session during the making of their debut that required the band to get creative when nature called.
“The story has sounded more ridiculous as time has gone on,” he says. The band recorded their debut at the Beacon School, their old high school near Times Square. “We’d often stay way past closing time,” he says. “There were security guards walking around, and we had to make sure they didn't see us. So the bottle had to do!”
Since then, the band has moved on from their alma mater’s studio and into their own spaces to record, affording them modern advantages like indoor plumbing.
“I produced the last record – I Hope This Isn't the End of the World – myself,” Harris says. “I went over to Attila’s [Anrather, drums] place and got a beat, then I'd go back to my place, edit it and then just play all the bass and guitars over it myself. I'm super proud of it.”
15. Moon Walker
“Oh my god, you haven't broken out of the construct!!”
Harry Springer, aka Moon Walker, is describing those guitar players who prioritize technique and flashy licks over something listenable, which, to Springer, is plaguing rock ’n’ roll.
“It makes you cringe, almost,” he says. “If there's going to be a solo, it should just be a part of the song. A guitar can move you in a way that a lot of voices can't. It can really scream. It’s a great tool to use to reach a point of extreme catharsis.”
There are several cathartic guitar moments on Moon Walker’s latest record, Wasteland Country, but none quite as moving as the guitar solo on the album’s finale, Everybody Goes to Heaven.
“I literally do not care whether a solo sounds hard. It just needs to be moving and compelling. That’s the moment where the melody can really be ingrained in your head, you know?”
Jacob Paul Nielsen is a music journalist whose work has appeared in Guitar World, Tape Op, Stereogum, Magnet, Ugly Things, and more. Since launching his blog Unstuck In Time in 2019, he’s interviewed people like Mike Matthews and Ken Lawrence, writing about everything from DIY pedals to obscure punk records. He lives in Detroit, Michigan, with his wife and dog, spending his free time running and hunting for old stereo equipment.
- Gregory Adams
- Damian FanelliEditor-in-Chief, Guitar World
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