Few bands in modern indie music are harder to categorize — and more rewarding to discover — than No Joy. Founded in Montreal in late 2009 by Jasamine White-Gluz, this shapeshifting project has spent over a decade redefining what shoegaze can be, threading together noise pop, dream pop, trip hop, and even nu-metal into something that genuinely belongs to nobody but itself. Whether you’re digging through vinyl crates or streaming their latest collaboration with Fire-Toolz, the No Joy catalog rewards the patient listener in ways that feel increasingly rare. Here’s a look at 20 of the best songs from No Joy’s greatest hits, spanning their evolution from the raw squall of Wait to Pleasure to the cybernetic shoegaze of Bugland.
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Hare Tarot Lies
Released as a single ahead of Wait to Pleasure in April 2013, “Hare Tarot Lies” is arguably still the quintessential No Joy song. Produced by Jorge Elbrecht at Gary’s Electric in Brooklyn, it places Jasamine White-Gluz’s hazy vocals over a droning, churning guitar melody that sounds like it’s being played in a sunlit fever dream. The lyrics — sensory, image-driven, difficult to parse and impossible to shake — capture what White-Gluz does so brilliantly: making the abstract feel devastatingly personal. Pitchfork covered it, Mexican Summer made it the lead promotional track, and it cemented No Joy’s place in the shoegaze revival conversation immediately. On headphones, this song swallows you whole.
Slug Night
Buried at track four on Wait to Pleasure, “Slug Night” is one of those songs that sounds deceptively simple until it doesn’t. The guitar interplay between White-Gluz and Laura Lloyd creates a layered, almost aquatic texture — guitars droning in overlapping waves rather than progressing through traditional chord changes. There’s something deeply disquieting about the track’s pulse, like music for 3 a.m. scrolling through your phone wondering what’s wrong with you. Elbrecht’s production here is particularly crisp; the low end sits just far back enough to let the melody breathe while still feeling physically present. Three and a half minutes of genuinely beautiful unease.
Hollywood Teeth
From 2015’s More Faithful — recorded at Gary’s Electric Studio in Brooklyn in October 2014 and mixed in Costa Rica by Jorge Elbrecht — “Hollywood Teeth” is one of the band’s most sonically aggressive tracks. The title alone promises something theatrical and slightly grotesque, and the song delivers: distorted guitars pile up on each other, White-Gluz’s vocals are treated with that signature blurry warmth, and the whole thing charges forward with an almost confrontational energy. What makes it special is the disciplined chaos — nothing here is accidental, even when it sounds like it’s about to collapse. Live, this one reportedly explodes.
Moon in My Mouth
Also from More Faithful, “Moon in My Mouth” is a different beast entirely — slower, more patient, more cinematic in its scope. White-Gluz lets her vocal melody unspool gradually over a guitar arrangement that feels almost orchestral in its density. Mastered by Heba Kadry (who would continue to work with No Joy across subsequent releases), the sonic texture here is immaculate: you can hear the shimmer in every chord overtone. It’s the kind of track you put on at dusk when the light is doing something strange, and you just let it move through you. Few shoegaze songs hit this particular combination of mournfulness and warmth.
Lunar Phobia
Released on February 19, 2013, “Lunar Phobia” was the first single from Wait to Pleasure and it was a statement of intent. The song opens with interlocking guitar lines that immediately establish No Joy’s ability to make technical, layered playing feel effortless and organic. White-Gluz’s vocal here has this cool, almost detached quality that somehow draws you in rather than pushing you away — a trick she deploys across the album but perhaps nowhere as effectively as here. Mexican Summer clearly knew what they had, making this the record’s first public-facing moment. Listening on quality headphones, the stereo separation of the guitars is something else entirely — the two instruments live on opposite sides of your head, making the song feel immersive in a way that most music simply doesn’t.
Uhy Yuoi Yoi
The title tells you everything and nothing. The closing track on Wait to Pleasure, “Uhy Yuoi Yoi” is two minutes and forty-five seconds of beautiful, glorious noise pop nonsense — and it works completely. The song seems almost deliberately to resist interpretation, the syllabic title extending into lyrics that prioritize sound over strict semantic meaning. What the track communicates instead is pure emotional texture: something anxious, something yearning, something almost funny in its commitment to strangeness. It’s a reminder that No Joy’s roots are in a kind of playful experimentalism that the shoegaze label sometimes obscures. If you’ve wondered why listeners become so devoted to this band, start here.
Dream Rats
One of the highlights of 2020’s Motherhood, “Dream Rats” features guest vocals from Alissa White-Gluz — Jasamine’s sister, and the vocalist for melodic death metal outfit Arch Enemy. The collaboration might sound incongruous on paper, but it works startlingly well. Alissa’s presence adds a dramatic, operatic weight to the track that transforms what might have been a relatively conventional dream-pop song into something genuinely unexpected. Drums from Jamie Thompson hit harder here than almost anywhere else on the album, and the guitar work by Tara McLeod (of Kittie) adds a shred-adjacent energy that feels earned rather than gratuitous. Motherhood was recorded primarily at Montreal’s Studio Toute Garnie, and the studio’s warm acoustics are palpable throughout — but especially here.
Birthmark
After five years without a full-length, “Birthmark” was the first thing No Joy asked the world to hear from Motherhood, and it justified the wait immediately. Combining 90s dance-rock urgency with phasing fuzz reminiscent of Deftones’ approach to loud-quiet dynamics, the song operates as a kind of thesis statement for the album’s stylistic ambitions — which are considerable. The music video, filmed during COVID lockdown by director Jordan Minkoff, features dancer Diavion Nicolas and a scene-stealing goat named Piquette (who also appears on the album cover). The fact that a song this dense and layered arrived alongside that whimsical visual tells you something about where White-Gluz’s head is at: serious craft, irreverent presentation.
Nothing Will Hurt
The most emotionally direct moment on Motherhood, “Nothing Will Hurt” strips away much of the sonic busyness that characterizes the album’s more adventurous tracks and replaces it with space. White-Gluz’s vocals are nakedly present in the mix — less treated, more exposed — and the arrangement builds slowly, adding instrumentation with real restraint. According to Joyful Noise Recordings, Motherhood emerged from White-Gluz reckoning with questions of bodily autonomy, parenthood, and her parents’ aging, and this track feels like the emotional core of those themes. Mastered by Heba Kadry, the dynamics are rendered beautifully; the quiet passages actually feel quiet, which is harder to achieve than it sounds in shoegaze production.
Why Mothers Die
The sixth track on Motherhood carries one of White-Gluz’s most searching lyrical themes — the title itself arrives with this weight, this refusal to look away from difficult biological and emotional realities. Joyful Noise described the record as White-Gluz investigating the physicalness of a body getting older and her parents’ aging, and this song plants a flag at the center of that territory. The production, co-helmed by Jorge Elbrecht, layers multiple guitar tones into something that feels both intimate and enormous — the sonic equivalent of confronting a big question in a small room. Drummer Jamie Thompson’s contribution to the album’s rhythmic architecture is especially felt here, where the beat maintains a kind of relentless forward pressure underneath the more searching melodic elements.
Four
Described in press materials as a groove-driven wah track, “Four” is one of Motherhood‘s most rhythmically adventurous moments and one of No Joy’s most unusual songs period. The track investigates the implications of parental aging, and there’s something almost unbearable in the contrast between the danceable groove and the emotional weight of what’s being processed. Plastic clarinet, scrap metal, bongos, and an EMS Putney synthesizer all made it into the Motherhood sessions according to the liner notes — and “Four” has textures that feel genuinely unclassifiable. Put it on good speakers, or — for full effect — quality headphones where the low-frequency details can properly bloom. For recommendations on gear that can do justice to this kind of layered production, this headphone comparison guide is genuinely useful.
Happy Bleeding
“Happy Bleeding” is one of those No Joy tracks that genuinely stops you mid-listen. On Motherhood, it represents the album’s deepest dive into trip-hop influence — the rhythm programming has a languid, almost underwater quality, and White-Gluz’s vocals float over the surface of the mix in a way that feels detached and aching simultaneously. Tara McLeod’s banjo contribution to the album surfaces in unexpected places, and “Happy Bleeding” has a string-like quality to its melodic texture that might be the instrument doing something unusual. The whole song feels like memory rather than experience, like looking back at something rather than living through it. It’s hypnotic in the best possible way.
Signal Lights
Track eight on Motherhood is also arguably its most structurally ambitious. “Signal Lights” builds through a slow accumulation of tension — layers of instrumentation adding themselves almost imperceptibly until the mix is genuinely dense and physically overwhelming — before releasing into something that approaches catharsis. The collaborative production approach, which involved Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie as engineer, gave the band access to a level of technical precision that earlier albums occasionally lacked, and “Signal Lights” is where that precision most clearly pays off. The song’s architecture rewards multiple listens; there are elements in the background of the mix that only emerge after several passes, each discovery recontextualizing the whole.
Fish
At probably the shortest runtime on Motherhood, “Fish” makes its impact in pure atmosphere rather than conventional song structure. It’s the kind of track that shouldn’t linger the way it does — compact, strange, its melodic hook arriving and departing before you’ve fully processed it. The song benefits enormously from placement within the album’s running order; it arrives as a kind of palate cleanser between larger statements, but taken in isolation it works equally well as a snapshot of No Joy’s most experimental impulses. The scrap metal and unconventional percussion that characterize Motherhood‘s instrumentation feel most present here, giving “Fish” a texture that’s less about traditional rock arrangement and more about sonic sculpture.
Primal Curse
The thematic centerpiece of Motherhood is this remarkable track, in which White-Gluz reads an optimistic letter her mother wrote as a teenager to her future children. The question she poses in the song hangs in the air of every subsequent listen. The production frames this autobiographical material with real sensitivity — it doesn’t oversell the emotional stakes, trusting the content to carry its own weight. Jorge Elbrecht’s mixing gives White-Gluz’s voice space to exist as both intimate personal document and shared artistic statement. Few shoegaze songs have ever been this literally about inheritance, about the way we see ourselves through our parents’ experiences, and fewer still have pulled it off this gracefully.
Bugland
The 2025 album Bugland — a collaboration with IDM/maximalist artist Fire-Toolz (Angel Marcloid), released via Sonic Cathedral in the UK and Hand Drawn Dracula elsewhere — received Pitchfork’s Best New Music designation, and the title track is the clearest statement of why. Pitchfork described the record as pumping No Joy’s shoegaze fifth album full of more textures, more ambiance, and more chunky 90s guitar, and “Bugland” the track delivers all of that in concentrated form. Marcloid’s production fingerprints are all over the texture — there’s an IDM precision to the drum programming, a digital sheen to the ambiance — but White-Gluz’s melodic sensibility anchors everything. Mastered by Heba Kadry, the sonic fidelity is exceptional.
Bits
One of the more immediate and accessible moments on Bugland, “Bits” leans into melodic directness in a way that feels almost playful within the album’s experimental context. The collaboration with Fire-Toolz unlocked something here — Marcloid described the process as feeling limitless, able to be fully herself while serving the album’s vision, and “Bits” has the energy of two creative forces genuinely enjoying each other’s company. Produced and mixed by Angel Marcloid at Angel Hair Audio, with mastering again from Heba Kadry, the track has a crisp sonic presence that rewards in-ear monitoring as much as speakers. If you’re shopping for earbuds to really hear what’s happening in the upper-frequency textures here, this earbud comparison guide is worth bookmarking.
My Crud Princess
The fifth track on Bugland, “My Crud Princess” is one of the album’s more distinctly playful moments — the title suggests something both affectionate and slightly monstrous, which is exactly the energy of the music. Reviewers noted the album’s ability to blend Boards of Canada’s ambient drift with shoegaze’s guitar density, and “My Crud Princess” sits squarely at that intersection: familiar enough to feel like solid ground, strange enough to keep you slightly off balance. Fire-Toolz’s sonic contributions throughout Bugland include a range of electronic textures that push against White-Gluz’s guitar-centric instincts in productive ways, and this track is a particularly good example of that productive friction.
Garbage Dream House
Critics praised Bugland‘s opening track for being somehow both ominous and joyful with its grinding melodic riff, robotic bleeps, and orchestral outro, and that description captures something real. As album openers go, “Garbage Dream House” is a masterclass — it announces the album’s hybrid aesthetic immediately, giving listeners just enough information to orient themselves before the stranger moments arrive. The orchestral outro is genuinely surprising: after a song built on synthetic texture and noise-rock guitar, it’s unexpected without feeling gratuitous. That’s the No Joy signature — the willingness to risk incongruity in the service of emotional truth.
Jelly Meadow Bright
The closing track on Bugland featuring Fire-Toolz is the album’s most ambitious moment by some measure. Running close to seven minutes, it’s structured as a kind of slow unfurling — elements enter, develop, and dissolve with the patient confidence of a band that doesn’t need to prove anything. Reviewers noted that it manages to meld the saxophonic chaos of The Stooges’ Fun House with the chill buoyancy of a high-end spa, which might sound like an absurd juxtaposition until you hear it. Chalk it up to the chemistry between White-Gluz and Marcloid, or to the mastering by Heba Kadry that makes the album’s full dynamic range available, or simply to the fact that after sixteen years and four studio albums, No Joy knows exactly what it’s doing. “Jelly Meadow Bright” is a perfect ending.
Frequently Asked Questions
What genre is No Joy?
No Joy is most commonly classified as shoegaze, but the band’s music consistently resists any single genre label. Across their discography, Jasamine White-Gluz has incorporated dream pop, noise pop, trip hop, trance, nu-metal, IDM, and ambient electronica into No Joy’s sound. Their 2025 album Bugland, recorded with Fire-Toolz, drew comparisons to Boards of Canada and My Bloody Valentine in the same breath — a combination that tells you everything about the band’s comfortable genre fluidity.
Who is the main member of No Joy?
No Joy was originally co-founded by Jasamine White-Gluz and Laura Lloyd, but following the release of More Faithful in 2015, Laura Lloyd departed and the band has continued solely under White-Gluz. She handles guitar, vocals, piano, synths, and production, and has described the band as something intentionally without a fixed category — an ongoing creative project rather than a static lineup.
What is No Joy’s best album?
This is a genuinely contested question among fans. Wait to Pleasure (2013) is widely regarded as a landmark in the shoegaze revival, produced by Jorge Elbrecht and showcasing the band at their most cohesive and melodically sharp. Motherhood (2020) represents a more ambitious and thematically rich expansion. Bugland (2025) has received Pitchfork’s Best New Music distinction and is arguably the band’s most sonically adventurous work to date. Each album represents a distinct phase of No Joy’s evolution.
What albums do the best No Joy songs come from?
The twenty songs featured in this guide are drawn from four primary releases: Wait to Pleasure (Mexican Summer, 2013), More Faithful (Mexican Summer, 2015), Motherhood (Joyful Noise and Hand Drawn Dracula, 2020), and Bugland (Sonic Cathedral and Hand Drawn Dracula, 2025). Each album offers a distinct No Joy experience, and serious fans are encouraged to explore all four as complete listening experiences rather than individual track collections.
Is No Joy still active?
Yes — very much so. Bugland, their fifth studio album, was released in August 2025 and received extensive critical acclaim, including coverage in Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Quietus, and KEXP. No Joy has continued touring in support of the album and remains one of the most creatively active and unpredictable bands working in experimental indie music today.