Folk Punk
Folk punk combines the acoustic instruments and songs of folk music with the speed, energy and attitude of punk rock.
It took shape in the early 1980s in Britain and the United States. Bands play acoustic guitar, fiddle, banjo, accordion or mandolin hard and fast, with rough, shouted vocals and lyrics that are often political or about hard living. It is rawer than folk rock, and its Irish-influenced branch is known as Celtic punk.
Artists it is known for: The Pogues, Violent Femmes, Against Me!, AJJ.
- Family
- Punk & Emo
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- United Kingdom and United States, early 1980s
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 3%
About 2,700 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have folk punk among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Folk Punk artists
Modern Baseball
McCafferty
Neutral Milk Hotel
The Front Bottoms
The Flat Stanleys
Seb Lowe
Kind of Like Spitting
The Mountain Goats
Panucci's Pizza
AJJ
The folk punk artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.