The Best Krautrock Songs Right Now

Albums teach you what krautrock can do. Individual tracks teach you what it sounds like in practice. These are the tracks that keep pulling people back — the ones where something crystallises into a form that is instantly recognisable as itself and nothing else. None of these songs sound like each other. That is precisely the point.

Neu! — "Hallogallo" (from Neu!, 1972)

Ten minutes and twenty-two seconds of the most influential rhythm in krautrock. Klaus Dinger's drums set up a motorik pulse — steady, machine-even, relentless without being cold — and Michael Rother's guitar builds texture above it in layers. Nothing is resolved, nothing arrives at a chorus. The track simply accumulates until it ends. Every post-punk band that cited krautrock absorbed something from "Hallogallo."

Can — "Vitamin C" (from Ege Bamyasi, 1972)

Can's most frequently cited single track and the most concentrated demonstration of what Jaki Liebezeit's drumming actually does. The groove is locked and funky in a way that sounds almost R&B-influenced, but Damo Suzuki's vocals and the arrangement ensure it remains its own strange thing. "Vitamin C" is the track for people who are not yet convinced: if this doesn't work on you, almost nothing else will either.

Kraftwerk — "Autobahn" (from Autobahn, 1974)

The full twenty-two-minute version. Yes, the whole thing. The track's three movements — the open highway, the sense of increasing speed, the late-afternoon feeling of journey's end — reward sustained listening in ways that the edited single cannot. The synthesiser sounds are primitive by any modern standard, but their limitation becomes an advantage: the timbres are distinctive, even beautiful. It is impossible to hear "Autobahn" without forming a mental image of a road disappearing into a flat grey horizon.

Can — "Halleluwah" (from Tago Mago, 1971)

Eighteen minutes long and one of the few extended rock tracks that never wastes a second of its length. The reason is Liebezeit's drumming, which is simultaneously mechanical and deeply musical across the full duration. There is a moment roughly nine minutes in where the bass and guitar lock into a particular groove that feels almost unbearably good — and Liebezeit simply keeps driving. Damo Suzuki's vocals are oblique, almost textural. The track feels improvised and inevitable at the same time.

Faust — "Krautrock" (from Faust IV, 1973)

A fifteen-minute track named after the genre, which suggests either supreme confidence or a very dry sense of humour. "Krautrock" opens with a repetitive, driving beat that gradually accumulates layers — guitar textures, bass ostinatos, electronics — until the whole thing becomes a sustained, churning noise. Then it stops. It is the most self-referential major track in the genre and one of the most hypnotic.

Tangerine Dream — "Phaedra" (from Phaedra, 1974)

The title track is seventeen minutes of sequencer patterns, evolving synthesiser tones and sustained textures. It is patient beyond almost anything else in the genre — there is no drumming, no conventional rhythm, and the harmony shifts so slowly it is difficult to pinpoint the moment of change. "Phaedra" shows what "kosmische Musik" means most clearly: music as space, depth and atmosphere rather than as event or narrative.

Harmonia — "Watussi" (from Musik von Harmonia, 1974)

More rhythmically immediate than Cluster's solo work, "Watussi" has a locked, almost dance-music groove that Michael Rother's melodic guitar plays against. The combination of rhythm, electronics and melody is unusual for 1974 and points directly toward what ambient and electronic music would later develop. It sounds like a bridge between the krautrock moment and something that had not happened yet.

Neu! — "Hero" (from Neu! '75, 1975)

"Hero" turns the motorik beat into something aggressive and relentless. Klaus Dinger sings in English and the track has a roughness, a rawness, that was genuinely new within the scene. It anticipates punk and post-punk with uncomfortable precision — Neu! '75 appeared the same year the Sex Pistols formed, and "Hero" sounds like it already knows what is coming.

For a deeper look at the albums these tracks come from, see essential krautrock albums explained. The artists behind them are covered in the best krautrock artists to know. If you want to understand why these tracks sound the way they do, krautrock subgenres explained provides the musical context. New? Start with the beginner's guide to krautrock.

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