Punk-minded discovery with a human hand.
Gregg's Guide to New Music is a track-forward discovery show led by Greg, who introduces bands, musicians, albums, singles, and Bandcamp pages. Its center of gravity is punk, with detours into metal, Celtic punk, Halloween specials, and Christmas songs.
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Gregg's Guide to New Music is a track-centered discovery show built around Greg's personal enthusiasm for bands and musicians. The premise stays simple. Greg introduces artists, shares where they are from, names the release and song, and gives listeners a path to support the music afterward. Buying music, picking up merch, seeing bands live, and sharing songs with friends all matter in the show's economy of attention. Punk rock is a major home base. Recent episodes move through skate punk, pop punk, Celtic punk, rave rock, metal, singer-songwriter material, and the occasional selection outside those lanes. The show is not locked to one lane. A St. Patrick's Day bonus episode turns into an all-Celtic-punk run with the Cloverhearts, Flogging Molly, Patty and the Rats, the Rum Jacks, and Dropkick Murphys. Halloween and Christmas specials give the feed a seasonal streak, from horror-sample energy to holiday songs. Greg's commentary is casual and unpolished in a way that feels close to a record-store recommendation. He gets excited about live bands. He admits when a pronunciation may be wrong. He notices when a song helps his mood and brings that into the recurring Groove Gumbo segment. The show also keeps a working-musician focus, often pointing to Bandcamp pages, official sites, link pages, and digital sources. That makes the listening experience feel less like passive consumption and more like a chain of support. Fans of Avatar, Social Distortion, Jason DeVore, Bowling for Soup, Farley, Electron, the Decline, No Advisory, and similar acts will find plenty of connective tissue. The tone is warm, nerdy, and sometimes scrappy. It can also flag explicit lyrics, darker songs, screaming vocals, or occasional strong language before the music plays. For PlayNext, the show works best as a human-curated gateway into punk-adjacent discovery, with enough seasonal oddities and personal side roads to keep the queue from feeling predictable.
Made for: For listeners who like punk, metal, Celtic punk, and offbeat seasonal music with context before each track. It especially suits people who want to find artists and then support them directly.
What sets it apart: Gregg's Guide to New Music pairs song curation with practical artist support, naming releases, origins, websites, Bandcamp pages, and live-show encouragement. The show's personality comes from Greg's personal favorites, informal asides, and recurring themed episodes rather than polished commentary.
Join Gregg as he guides you along the new music, sounds and bands that you won't find on the radio.
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loose holiday roundtable with Radio Ronin banter, a punk prank, and Haley Reinhart's softer closing turn.
Holiday music gets treated like a friendly contact sport as Greg's Guide to New Music turns its Christmas episode, 12 Songs of Christmas, into a loose group ritual.
A warm Christmas mixtape where mall-punk nostalgia gives way to a softer We the Kings close.
Greg's Guide to New Music frames its Christmas episode as a loose, affectionate mixtape, moving through the 12 Songs of Christmas while making a plainspoken case for backing the bands behind them.
Celtic songs with pub-table stories.
Chicago critics DeRogatis and Kot pair new-album reviews with deep dives into records like Rumours.
Billboard's Keith Caulfield and Katie Atkinson break down the week's Hot 100 and 200 charts.
Gregg hosts a Christmas special with Radio Ronin co-hosts Kimmy Chunga, Chandler Smith, and Josh Hansen.
Gregg hosts the annual Christmas episode of Gregg's Guide to New Music, joined by the Radio Ronin crew.
A brief, cryptic statement about fear and misunderstanding.
Gregg introduces a festive episode about the 12 songs of Christmas with playful holiday banter.
A Halloween-themed episode where hosts discuss 13 songs of Halloween with guests, featuring horror movie quotes and spooky banter.
A brief warning about explicit content before the episode begins.