The best bands we saw at Iceland Airwaves 2025

Here’s his top 10 acts from Reykjavik’s best weekend (with a few bonus higlights). 

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The 26th year of one of the most enduring and loved music festivals of the chilly north has stripped everything back to the roots. No big headliners, just a small cluster of venues all five minutes or less from each other.

A line up that of mostly unknown acts, but with a reach from Mongolia to Kurdistan through Estonia, Scandinavia, across UK and Ireland to a healthy helping of local music. There wasn’t even an app this year – just printable daily schedules. 

The off-venue listings were tricky to navigate but hats off to the punter who made the spreadsheet of every act on and off-venue by day and time, which spread virally through the festival faithful.

And that was all we needed because the hard work was in the bag. Chasing down a band from one listen to one song on the festival’s playlist was absolutely the right way to approach the weekend. You can’t be overthinking this Airwaves.

Of the six or so venues, we keep finding ourselves coming back to what must be one of Europe’s best rooms for live music – Gaukurinn – the walls are still full of years of sound from Fontaines D.C., Kneecap and hundreds more.

And while it is a new music festival – and for sure you find acts on the verge of blowing up (Hot Chip 2004, Haim 2013, Fontaines 2022) – it is also acts that give you one of the best moments you’ll ever have, and then disappear. All these young bands are buzzing at being in Reykjavik. We’re all buzzing being at Airwaves, high on €11 beers and glowing from the afternoon pool visits.

Throw all this into a room and everyone just goes for it. Moments happen. Getdown Services strip to the waist. Milkywhale do impossible high-kicks. Fat Dog spend half the gig in the crowd. You watch the crowd learn the chorus of a song during the song so they can sing it back immediately. And being there for it is so worth any wincingly-early airport transfers and hot dogs for dinner (they are the best hot dogs though).

‘Discovery’ is secondary to being in these rooms in this city when it, without fail, happens. And there was SO much of it this year. Here’s our top ten acts we saw, utterly based on what was happening in the room. We missed some clashing acts that were raved about afterwards, but with our own eyes, ears and boots on the ground in Iceland these are our picks from one of our favourite ever Airwaves of the 17 we have been to. If we haven’t convinced you to get up to this festival by now, what more do we need to do? 

Photos:  Jakob Bekker-Hansen.

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1. Vtoroi Ka / Второй Ка

We were utterly hooked by the track below before we went. Vtoroi Ka, out of Kyrgyzstan and singing in Russian, were just euphorically ramshackle and full of spirit. The tunes are so much fun and these guys are the partymakers they look like.

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Bricknasty

DGAF avant jazz, lounge listening put through a shredder and masked up. Absolutely brought the house down. Energy levels live are leagues above. Back in Gaukurinn again where there always seems to be an Irish band at the top of their game on the bill.

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Fat Dog

London band Fat Dog bring class hooks, and a bulky, chuggy sound while singing about the weird ordinary everyday. A jumble shop on stage, drinking cans from the pocket and at least one member from the band was in the busy Art Museum crowd at any given moment. Fun. Brash. Silly. Brilliant.

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Punchbag

London brother and sister Clara and Anders Bach write songs that have just grown out of teen bedrooms. Partly ’90s UK indie, with rave beats and an unbottleable energy on stage and no matter who you are if you’re not going bananas mental during ‘You Used To Be So Sexy’ in a sweaty little gig room then check your pulse.

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BALTHVS

Heart-healing, twangy, psychy sounds, a warm fire in winter, Colombian psychedelic funk band BALTHVS are a desert road movie that make you want to quit the day job and float off on their thermal current.

BALTHVS play Dublin on December 6th.

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DEADLETTER

No jeans for these Yorkshire guys. Angular, slacks-wearing and shoulder-dancing ska-tinted post-punk. Magnetic frontman in a billowed shirt, another crowd walkabout. Went in for a quick look. Couldn’t leave. 

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Jasmine.4.t

Jasmine.4.t has been through a hell of a lot. Coming out as trans turned her life upside down yet out the other side of it she pulls the sweetest, brightest North-American-indie sounds and brings them back to Manchester, the songs themselves telling a fuller tale. Big, wide sound. And ANOTHER dive into the crowd, this one with a guitar. A tune of the year contender here…

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Panam

First impression is Everything Everything fronted by a BeeGee, but that’s being a bit lazy. Barcelona’s Panam spin up a weatherfont of lifting, danceable guitar sounds that’s impossible not to love. And song after song, they never dropped the mood. Everyone at it felt at least 45% better about life after that gig.

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Getdown Services

You had to be there. Really. Raw, hilarious England stripped to the dad-bod waist with a view of the nightime harbour of Reykjavik behind the stage. Beats on a laptop, and a sweaty guitar. It could be comedy is it wasn’t so fucking brilliant.

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Night Tapes

Breathy, midnight-streets dream pop to drive away to. Front woman Iiris Vesik twists shapes about like she’s anchored to the floor but the music is pure floaty escape. Back in the rebuilt NASA venue after many many years, this was just the gig for the room.

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Top Three Local Favourites

Múm
Though they are local, Múm have a lot of reach internationally and in advance of their tour they put on a big closing partner event in the beautiful Harpa concert hall on the Sunday. A new, very strong album putting wind in the sails it was almost a familial two-act play they put on with instrument switches, accidental guitar drops, purposeful human drops, dry Icelandic humour and yet, once a song begins, they tread a perfect line between sweetness, light and stadium elation. Guest appearance from former singer Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir for perennial favourite Green Grass of Tunnel and we were wrapped up with a bow.

Ari Árelius
This guitarist and producer put together a band of locals (which is what we always felt every person in Iceland does at some point) and created a Lynchian-psych Balkan circus sound in the off-venue at the back of a bar. A trippy, cheery ride.

SIGRÚN

In the smallest venue, Bird, fabulously costumed Sigrún uses her voice to do so much work, its peaks and dips accompanied by a simple two-piece behind her. She echoes and loops but always lands back into what seems like the soul-warming DNA of Icelandic melody.

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David’s choice
Without fail, the unmistakable Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke is there at Airwaves. He’s always kind enough to have a quick chat every year and we asked him what his favourite from this year was. Take it away Panic Shack.

Just three more…

We can’t go without mentioning the delicate bliss of The Vernon Spring.

The Mongolian, soothing jazz of Enji.

And the inch perfect Arabic Shoegaze of Iraqi-American Nabeel

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Iceland Airwaves 2026 takes place from November 4 – 7.
They have a “full reveal” of something new in January. (Hopefully they don’t change much.)