Indian Post Rock Bands: 9 Acts From AWKS to Zokova

Indian post rock bands to know, from Aswekeepsearching and Bengaluru pioneers Lounge Piranha and Until We Last to Delhi's Zokova, with a starter playlist.

Key facts

Birthplace of the scene: Bengaluru, mid-2000s, starting with Lounge Piranha (Rolling Stone India)
Best-known band: Aswekeepsearching, formed in Ahmedabad in 2013, known for Hindi and Urdu vocals
Latest major album: Aswekeepsearching's kyun? (2025), their first long-form release since 2020
Indian twist: Hindi vocals, screamed refrains and instruments such as sitar, tabla and sarangi
International visitors: Mogwai (2015), Explosions in the Sky (2016) and MONO at Ziro Festival (2018)

The best Indian post rock bands include Aswekeepsearching, the Ahmedabad-born band famous for its Hindi-sung post-rock, and Bengaluru's pioneers Lounge Piranha, Until We Last, Space Behind the Yellow Room, Farfetch'd and Stuck in November. New Delhi adds Zokova and Ioish, and guitar-led instrumental acts such as Blackstratblues sit close to the genre. Indian post-rock grew out of Bengaluru in the mid-2000s and spread to Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Kerala. Its musicians use the swelling crescendos of Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky, often adding Hindi vocals or Indian instruments.

This guide traces the history of the scene and profiles the essential bands with sourced facts. It ends with a starter playlist for anyone new to the sound.

What post-rock means in India

Post-rock uses rock instruments, mostly guitars, bass and drums, to make music that does not follow rock song structures. The tracks are usually long, often instrumental and built on slow crescendos rather than verses and choruses. The genre took shape in the 1990s with Slint in the US, Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Canada, Mogwai in Scotland and Sigur Rós in Iceland.

In a 2015 feature on the Indian scene, Rolling Stone India traced its start to Bengaluru about a decade earlier. Indian post-rock bands have since made the form their own in two ways. Some add vocals the genre usually avoids: Hindi and Urdu harmonies, or screamed refrains. Others bring in Indian instruments such as sitar, tabla and sarangi. As Until We Last's Ketan Bahirat told the magazine, Indian bands are doing things differently from their international peers.

International tours have also helped. Firstpost notes that Tides From Nebula (2014), Mogwai (2015), and Explosions in the Sky and 65daysofstatic (2016) all played India. Japan's MONO played Ziro Festival of Music in 2018. Post-rock also overlaps with progressive and math rock; if you like long, intricate instrumentals, our list of Indian progressive rock bands is a natural next step.

The essential Indian post rock bands

1. Aswekeepsearching

Aswekeepsearching, often shortened to AWKS, is India's best-known post-rock band. It began in Ahmedabad in September 2013 as a home studio project by vocalist and guitarist Uddipan Sarmah and guitarist and keyboardist Shubham Gurung. Bandcamp Daily reports that they had written their first song before realising it counted as post-rock. They only started listening to Explosions in the Sky and This Will Destroy You in late 2014.

The band's calling card is its Hindi and Urdu vocals. Sarmah told Rolling Stone India in 2015 that without them AWKS would have been just another post-rock band. Their albums are Khwaab (2015), Zia (2017), which added sitar and tabla, Rooh (2019), which added sarangi on one track, Sleep (2020) and kyun? (2025). Wild City described kyun? as their first long-form release since 2020, a 10-track album about the band's first decade. They have shared stages with Caspian, God Is an Astronaut, 65daysofstatic and Steven Wilson. Our Aswekeepsearching band profile covers their story in depth.

Start with: Rooh, Zia, Shayad Bhool Gaye
Essential album: Zia (2017)

2. Lounge Piranha

Bengaluru's Lounge Piranha is where Indian post-rock begins. Rolling Stone India writes that guitarists Kamal Singh and Abhijeet Tambe found the post-rock label on MySpace around 2005 because it seemed to describe their music: rock instruments used to make non-rock music. Their sound was trippier and more electronic than the genre's international leaders. They released one album, Going Nowhere, in 2008 and split in 2011. Their influence was large: Uddipan Sarmah and Ketan Bahirat both credit them with drawing them to the genre.

Essential album: Going Nowhere (2008)
Line-up: Kamal Singh, Abhijeet Tambe, bassist Rohan Ramesh and drummer George Mathen

3. Until We Last

Until We Last started in 2011 as Ketan Bahirat's solo bedroom project in Bengaluru. Rolling Stone India describes it as an instrumental post-rock band that uses guitars, samples and keyboards to build a psychedelic, lush sound. The band settled on a stable line-up in 2013 and released its debut EP, Earthgazing, in 2014. Zokova's Ritwik De told the magazine that Until We Last's 2011 demos were the first Indian post-rock he had heard.

Start with: To Space and Back, Rain
Essential release: Earthgazing (2014)

4. Space Behind the Yellow Room

Space Behind the Yellow Room formed in Bengaluru in 2012 around drummer and vocalist Shoumik Biswas, with guitarists Devasheesh Sharma and Nihar Apte. Their self-released debut, Conversations That Determine a Life (2014), moves between post-rock build-ups, post-metal fury and electronic interludes. Rolling Stone India gave it 3.5 out of 5. The band was one of the first Indian post-rock acts to play abroad, at Music Matters in Singapore in 2015. Biswas's own definition sums up their approach: post-rock, he says, is like post-modernism, breaking down the structures of whatever came before.

Start with: Beautiful Repetition, Victory Dance
Essential album: Conversations That Determine a Life (2014)

5. Farfetch'd

Another Bengaluru bedroom project, Farfetch'd was started in 2011 by guitarist Akash Murthy. It released its debut album, The Alchemist, in 2013, before the band began playing live. Murthy told Rolling Stone India that what drew him to bands like Poland's Tides From Nebula was how heavy they sounded using layers of clean guitar tones with little or no distortion. That approach defines the Farfetch'd sound.

Essential album: The Alchemist (2013)

6. Stuck in November

Bengaluru trio Stuck in November, with Mayur Nanda, Nihal Anand and Nihaal Joseph, started as a post-rock band and moved towards instrumental math rock. Reviewing their EP First Slice of Cake in The Hindu in 2016, Anurag Tagat heard jazz-influenced drumming, polyrhythmic guitar and electronic layers. Its closing track is called Polyrhythmic Synth Jazz Simulation.

Start with: Strongs, Birthdays
Essential release: First Slice of Cake (2016)

7. Zokova

Zokova is a New Delhi trio: guitarist and producer Ritwik De, bassist Amar Pandey and drummer Suyash Gabriel. Rolling Stone India dates the band to 2007, and De says the project exists because of Sigur Rós, whose 1999 album Ágætis byrjun reached his family on CD. After years of live shows with almost no studio releases, Zokova released its debut studio single, Tsoma, in December 2024 and announced a first album. Avial's Rex Vijayan is mastering the album, and its tracks are designed to flow into one another.

Start with: Tsoma
Sound: cinematic, machine-like grooves and long instrumental arcs

8. Ioish

New Delhi trio Ioish appear in Firstpost's 2018 guide to post-rock in India, which singled out their Reconstructing Dreams EP on the Shimla-based label Pinecone Records. They are part of the wave of Delhi bands, alongside Mellowghost, that Rolling Stone India noted spreading the genre beyond Bengaluru.

Essential release: Reconstructing Dreams (2018)

9. Blackstratblues

Blackstratblues is the project of guitarist Warren Mendonsa, formerly of the Mumbai rock band Zero, now based in Auckland. It is more guitar-instrumental rock than strict post-rock. Firstpost nonetheless credits Blackstratblues, along with Tajdar Junaid, with bringing instrumental rock into Indian independent listeners' vocabulary. The project has released seven studio albums, from Nights in Shining Karma (2007) to Artificial Integrity (2026), plus two live albums.

Start with: The Universe Has a Strange Sense of Humour (2015)
Latest album: Artificial Integrity (2026)

A starter Indian post-rock playlist

Rooh by Aswekeepsearching
Shayad Bhool Gaye by Aswekeepsearching
To Space and Back by Until We Last
Beautiful Repetition by Space Behind the Yellow Room
Strongs by Stuck in November
Tsoma by Zokova
Victory Dance by Space Behind the Yellow Room

FAQ

Which is the best post-rock band in India?

Aswekeepsearching is the best-known Indian post-rock band, with five studio albums from Khwaab (2015) to kyun? (2025) and tours alongside Caspian, God Is an Astronaut and Steven Wilson.

Which was the first post-rock band in India?

Rolling Stone India traces Indian post-rock to Bengaluru's Lounge Piranha, who adopted the post-rock label around 2005 and released Going Nowhere in 2008.