Is 90s-era shoegaze dead? Well, Slowdive put out a new album in 2023, so it’s not entirely dead. But what’s out there for fans of classic 90s shoegaze who also want some modern elements? Here are three bands sure to delight even the biggest 90s shoegaze purist. Just MustardIrish experimental rock band Just Mustard formed in 2015, and they’ve since released three albums with varying degrees of shoegaze influences. Their debut, Wednesday, is often considered more standard shoegaze. But their 2022 follow-up Heart Under is a pleasant blend of shoegaze and noise rock that aligns them more with the genre’s 90s origins.Just Mustard has heavily electronic, almost industrial-sounding tracks, like “Curtains” off of Wednesday. They can also slow it down to a crawl, tapping into the guitar-based lethargy of straight shoegaze. Across their three albums, they present a broad spectrum of 90s-influenced post-rock. They’re a great choice for fans seeking a more modern take on classic shoegaze.DeafheavenDeafheaven formed in 2010, and while they’re not your typical shoegaze band, they’re still putting out interesting music in that realm. Upon the release of their 2013 album Sunbather, Deafheaven earned widespread acclaim for their blend of shoegaze and black metal. This was later named blackgaze, with the band being lauded as a genre-definer.Members of Deafheaven have stated that this mix of shoegaze and black metal was being done years before they even formed the band. But they essentially solidified it around the time of Sunbather, however unintentional that was. So, for shoegaze fans looking for something outside the classic sound, there’s boundary-breakers Deafheaven. Additionally, they released their latest album, Lonely People With Power, in 2025.DIIVDIIV debuted in 2012 with the album Oshin, drawing from several seemingly contradictory influences, like krautrock, Nirvana, and world music. That became a hallmark of DIIV, bringing together complex influences and making them work in harmony. Like Deafheaven, DIIV isn’t your typical shoegaze outfit. They capture the more experimental elements of the 90s-era genre and bring them to the forefront. DIIV also goes headfirst into complex lyrical themes. Their latest album, Frog in Boiling Water, takes its name and concepts from a philosophical metaphor featured in the 1996 novel The Story of B. The band explained their understanding of the concept as the “slow, sick, and overwhelmingly banal collapse of society under end-stage capitalism, the brutal realities we’ve maybe come to accept as normal.” Specifically, the album is “a collection of snapshots from various angles of our modern condition which we think highlights what this collapse looks like and, more particularly, what it feels like.”Photo by Kieran Frost/RedfernsThe post 3 Bands That Prove 90s Shoegaze Is Still Alive, You’re Just Not Looking In the Right Places appeared first on VICE.