The feat of Public Luxury isn’t its anger, it’s how fun, inclusive, and totally uplifting Downtown Boys, originally hailing from Rhode Island, make that anger sound. Where the band’s early singles and EPs (collected on 2013’s Downtown Boys) felt like a product of the punk underground, 2026’s Public Luxury—their first LP after a nine-year break—has the big-tent, night-out swagger of a mid-’90s Rancid album. Whether channeling skate-punk anthems (“The City Begins,” “Viva La Rosa”), acid-neon New Wave (“Sirena,” “Mi Concha”), goth-pop (“Yellow Sun”), or even shades of ’70s glam, they lean into music that gets its politics across not through sloganeering, but through feeling and sound. This is the work of people stronger, together—a protest, but a party, too.