Soul survivors

WHEN TOMORROW SOUNDS LIKE YESTERDAY

- Sanjoy Narayan

There is something delectably anachronistic about watching a young band in 2026 commit to the sound of 1968.

That's precisely what Thee Sacred Souls have been doing since they emerged from San Diego's garage scene. And judging by their packed festival schedule — from California's Old School Love Show in March to New York’s Governors Ball Music Festival in June — audiences can’t seem to get enough of it.

The trio's “sweet soul” aesthetic isn't pretentious pastiche or vintage cosplay. It is a deliberate rejection of the synthetic smoothness that dominates contemporary production, and a return to the crackle and hiss of analog tape, and the slight imperfections that mean actual humans are at work.

Inanage when Alcan generate a passable R&B track in seconds, Thee Sacred Souls are betting that listeners still crave something irrefutably human.

They are not alone in making this wager. The retro-soul movement has been quietly gathering momentum for years, and 2026 could feel like an inflection point. Walk into an independent record store in Los Angeles or London and one finds new releases that could be mistaken for long-lost recordings from Stax Records, the Memphis-based soul and R&B label founded in 1957.