Garage rock

Raw, loud, and faster than your easy pace should be

By Rob Gordon

Here's the thing about garage rock and running: they're both about momentum over precision. Nobody's asking if your stride is perfect at mile 5, and nobody's asking if Teen Mortgage had a proper mixing budget. You're both just trying to keep moving forward with whatever you've got.

I spent six months trying to figure out why I kept queuing up Wine Lips and Bass Drum of Death for tempo runs when I had perfectly good playlists full of songs with, you know, actual production value. Then one Tuesday morning on the Lakefront Trail, somewhere around the chess pavilion, it clicked. Garage rock doesn't give you space to think. That fuzzy, overdriven guitar and those driving drums—they fill every corner of your brain. When White Reaper's blasting through your headphones, you're not calculating splits or wondering if your knee hurts. You're just running.

The tempo helps. Most of this stuff sits right in that 160-180 BPM sweet spot—too fast for easy days, perfect for when you're actually trying. But it's the attitude that matters. Garage rock sounds like it was recorded in one take because it probably was. It's got this beautiful "good enough, let's go" energy that's exactly what you need when you're negotiating with yourself at mile 6 about whether to keep pushing.

Dick—my employee, walking catastrophe—once argued that garage rock was just punk rock for people afraid of commitment. He's wrong, obviously, but he's onto something. This is music for people who like their energy raw but their melodies intact. Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Death From Above 1979, Plague Vendor—these bands understand that you can have hooks AND distortion. That you can be catchy without being soft.

Twenty playlists deep in this category, and I'm still not tired of it. That should tell you something.

28 playlists

Top 10 Garage rock Running Songs

These tracks appear across multiple curated garage rock running playlists.

  1. 1. Death Train — THE BOBBY LEES
  2. 2. Heartbroken, In Disrepair — Dan Auerbach
  3. 3. Keep On Knocking — Death
  4. 4. Rolling On — The Murlocs
  5. 5. Sure As Spring — La Luz
  6. 6. Surf 2 — New Candys
  7. 7. Walk Like a Motherfucker — Ghost Funk Orchestra
  8. 8. 'Bout To Lose It — Dinosaur Pile-Up
  9. 9. 1000 Answers — The Hives
  10. 10. 1940 - AmpLive Remix — Amp Live

Frequently Asked Questions

What pace should I run to garage rock?

Anything faster than conversational. Look, if you're trying to run easy recovery pace to Bass Drum of Death, you're going to blow up your heart rate and wonder why. This is tempo run music, threshold work, maybe long runs when you're feeling spicy. Most of this stuff sits around 165-175 BPM, which means you're either running medium-hard or you're doing that thing where you shuffle at 5.2 mph while Teen Mortgage screams at you. Your choice, but be honest about what you're doing.

I'm new to garage rock. Where do I start?

Start with White Reaper if you want melodies you can actually sing. Start with Wine Lips if you want something that sounds like it was recorded in a good basement instead of a great studio. Death From Above 1979 if you want to feel like you're running through a wall. Frankie and the Witch Fingers if you like your garage rock with a psychedelic hangover. Honestly, just pick one of these playlists and hit shuffle. Garage rock is designed for discovery—half these bands have three songs on Spotify and they're all great.

Does garage rock work for interval workouts?

Perfectly. The whole genre is basically structured like intervals—short, intense, over before you overthink it. Most garage rock tracks clock in around 2-3 minutes, which is ideal if you're doing 800s or mile repeats. The energy surge you get from a Plague Vendor track is exactly what you need coming into the last 200 meters. Just don't try to match your rest interval to the quiet part of the song. There is no quiet part.

Why does garage rock sound so lo-fi?

Because it's supposed to. This is music recorded by people who care more about momentum than reverb settings. That fuzzy, slightly distorted sound? That's not a mistake—that's the whole point. It sounds immediate, urgent, like it might fall apart but it never quite does. Which, coincidentally, is exactly how running feels most days. The lo-fi aesthetic isn't laziness; it's honesty. Wand could record in a fancy studio if they wanted. They don't want to. Neither should you overthink your Tuesday morning 10K.

Can I run long runs to garage rock or will I burn out?

You can, but you need to pace yourself—musically and physically. I've done 12-milers to nothing but this category, but I wasn't trying to race the music. The trick is finding the playlists with a little variety, maybe some Wand tracks that groove more than they pummel. Or accept that you're going to run the first 8 miles way too hard and the last 4 in survival mode. I've done both. The survival mode runs make better stories.