There are no bad Strokes songs, just ones you might know less than others.

The New York City rock band properly kicks off its 2026 tour this week, following appearances at April's Coachella and last week's Bonnaroo festivals, as it gears up to release its new album "Reality Awaits" on July 24.

To mark the occasion, we're highlighting 10 of the band's best songs that aren't quite under-the-radar, but are not the first-tier Strokes songs that immediately come to mind when one thinks of the band.

Those would be no-brainers like "Someday," "Hard to Explain" and "Last Nite," or really anything from the band's classic 2001 debut album, "Is This It." We're including 2003's "Room on Fire" in that pile as well: Oops, all classics, no unheralded gems. Gotta dig deeper.

Full disclosure: This was originally going to be a list of the band's 25 best songs, but there was the unavoidable collision of all those "Is This It" songs at the top, and it felt disingenuous to leave any of them off the list. (Just between us, in that discarded list, "Someday" was going to be No. 1.)

So instead we're shifting our focus to highlight some lesser-known songs from the band's catalog, songs that might get skipped over by casual fans. In compiling the list, we also threw out songs from 2020's "The New Abnormal," since that album is also wall-to-wall stunners, and they're properly appreciated as such. ("Ode to the Mets" is the best Mets-affiliated property to come along since Daryl Strawberry.)

So here's the list. Happy listening!

'Falling Out of Love' (from 'Reality Awaits')

The group's latest single is a heavily AutoTuned ballad that has divided many of the group's fans online, a healthy way of showing The Strokes are still pushing forward in their music and are still able to rattle their fanbase. That's a good thing. Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas has long been an AutoTune advocate, using it as a tool to express and heighten emotion in his voice, the same way Kanye West did 20 years ago (and Charli xcx does today). He lays it on thick in "Falling Out of Love," an otherwise sparse ballad, almost naked in its simplicity. But Casablancas uses that backdrop as a canvas for his heartbreaking vocal delivery, switching over to a commanding, almost Leonard Cohen-style delivery in the song's spoken second verse. The track is hopefully a scene setter for the sonic explorations that lie ahead on "Reality Awaits"; either way, it's one of the group's most strikingly emotional works to date.

'Drag Queen' (from 'Future Present Past')

Sometimes the best Strokes songs are Voidz songs. The most sonically adventurous offering from the Strokes canon comes on this track from 2016's "Future Present Past" EP — it's the "future" of the title, if it's to be read literally — which stylistically pulls from Casablancas' heavily experimental other band, The Voidz. In a robot soundscape, Casablancas infuses politically charged lyrics with a Sade reference ("coast to coast L.A. to Chicago, I don't know geography all that well") in a caustic fight between good and evil. It still sounds futuristic 10 years later.

'Chances' (from 'Comedown Machine')

"Comedown Machine" is the whipping boy of The Strokes' catalog, but the 2013 album has aged well (and is home to "Call It Fate, Call It Karma," which became a moody TikTok hit years after the album's release). "Chances" is a catchy, quiet song full of yearning, and does that thing where it sounds like it would fit perfectly inside a montage in an '80s John Hughes film (see also "Bad Decisions," "Two Kinds of Happiness"). A gem that has yet to be fully recognized as such.

'Ask Me Anything' (from 'First Impressions of Earth')

There's an argument to be made that the entire back half of "First Impressions of Earth" is severely underrated. But the album definitely caught the band at a crossroads, and its internal push-pull is exemplified in the lyrics of this spacy midtempo track, which finds Casablancas repeating "I've got nothing to say" in the chorus. But the band finds beauty in its malaise, and reasserts its place in the landscape even amid the uncertainty. "We could drag it out," Casablancas sings, "but that's for other bands to do." Well said.

'Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)' (B-side from the 'You Only Live Once' single)

A Marvin Gaye cover doesn't sound like the first or second or fifth choice for The Strokes to tackle, but the band lights up on this rework of the "What's Going On" track, which features a vocal assist from Eddie Vedder and a cameo from Josh Homme on drums. As Vedder and Casablancas trade lyrics, Gaye's heartbreak over the destruction of our environment remains inextricably woven into the fabric of the song. The experiment was a success.

'Hawaii' (B-side from the 'Juicebox' single)

New York is pretty far from Hawaii. But this playful, carefree, surf-rock tribute to our nation's 50th state sounds like it could have come from a sun-blasted Elvis movie, and it's so colorfully rendered you can almost hear the waves crashing in the background. It's a vacation in song form.

'Red Light' (from 'First Impressions of Earth')

The final song on "First Impressions" could easily fit on "Room on Fire," its upbeat tempo squeezed in alongside "Meet Me in the Bathroom" and "Under Control." "Evening Sun" feels like a more natural closer for the album, but "Red Light" ends the album on a bouncy note, with Albert Hammond Jr.'s rubbery guitars lighting up the room, sounding like the band churning in classic form.

'Gratisfaction' (from 'Angles')

"Angles" and its '80s-inspired soundscapes often resemble the inside of a Q*bert game, and "Gratisfaction" sounds like what might be playing in the background at whatever arcade the gang was hanging out at inside their minds while making it. It's a little bit Thin Lizzy, a little bit The Cars, with an Elvis Costello-like vocal delivery bringing it all together. For a band that has always evoked a retro cool, it's one of the few times they made a song that sounds like it was actually delivered from the past.

'80's Comedown Machine' (from 'Comedown Machine')

It is the title track from an album, so maybe it's not all that under-the-radar. But this quiet, almost whispered lullaby from "Comedown Machine" — a spiritual cousin to "Call It Fate, Call it Karma," as well as "I'll Try Anything Once" — is so delicate it feels like it could fall apart at any second, but is carried over the finish line and then gently tucked into bed. A lovely song.

'Oblivious' (from 'Future Present Past')

This "Future Present Past" track was given a scorching resurrection at Coachella. It soundtracked a damning video of the U.S. government's decades of meddling in foreign affairs, leading up to the present moment, and was the final song in the band's set, creating a mic drop moment as they walked off the stage. It was the most outwardly political the band has ever been, and the moment shined new light on this deep cut and its searing guitar work by Albert Hammond, Jr., while its piercingly direct chorus ("what side are you standing on?" Casablancas wails) not only retains its relevance, but today feels more poignant than ever.

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