Most music aficionados are aware of the bands that made psychedelics a pillar of the zeitgeist: Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and the array of artists orbiting the kaleidoscopic counterculture scene of the 1960s and ‘70s. And while many people celebrate the sounds from this highly artistic moment in history, what’s often glossed over is how our favorite Schedule I drugs fueled that era’s creative output. Psychedelics gave musicians the artistic agility to redefine what popular music could be, paving the way for generations of artists to come.

Now, psychedelia as a sonic aesthetic is embedded across an array of genres — everything from pop to hip-hop to electronic and indie rock. And, despite the stigma around these substances, an increasing number of musicians have spoken candidly — some for decades — about how psychedelics have shaped their songwriting, production, or sense of creative exploration. Here is a list of artists who’ve been among the most open about how psychedelics have shaped their creative process and work.

Even if they aren’t the most well-known psychedelic rock band, the 13th Floor Elevators are often considered the first, with their 1966 album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators pioneering the genre. The liner notes even talk about the “quest for pure sanity” via chemical enhancements and altered mental perceptions.

The rapper behind songs like “L$D” is inspired by—you guessed it—LSD. “It helps me cope with life,” he told Billboard in 2015. “I’ve been doing this stuff since I got into the industry. People are scared to talk about it.” And in case anyone wondered if this influenced his music, he added that “my art, my visuals” are “very trippy.”

The alt-rock band Incubus has always had a stone-y edge, bringing a holistic energy of high-key spiritualism to hits like “Wish You Were Here” and “Stellar.” It turns out that frontman Brandon Boyd is a seasoned mental traveler, describing to DoubleBlind how he has honed his “observer” instincts through plant medicines and Cha Dao tea rituals.

To include the obvious, The Beatles have spoken about psychedelic experiences that influenced their music, including the very first dinner where a friend put LSD in John Lennon and George Harrison’s coffee and Harrison “had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God.”

Another obvious but influential psychedelic rock band, Jefferson Airplane was best known for its Alice in Wonderland-inspired song “White Rabbit,” which played on psychedelic tropes while making social commentary on the hypocrisy of those who condemn psychedelics while drinking alcohol.

An indie-rock songwriter beloved for her innovative guitar style and raw musings on trauma and death, Indigo De Souza told DoubleBlind that she prefers “macro-dosing” mushrooms while camping in the woods in pursuit of creative inspiration and ego death. “Suddenly I’m able to work with energy around me,” she explained. “I am able to work through the energy in my body and work through trauma.” 

The famed Chicago rapper made a creative and commercial breakthrough with Acid Rap, a 2013 mixtape that was heavily inspired by his experiences with LSD. “It’s less of a mind-altering drug to me,” he told HipHopDX in 2013. “It just frees you and allows you to think outside of what you would normally write about or listen to or how you would evaluate a song that you were making.” The track “Acid Rain” offers a lovely image of his tripping experiences: “Kicked off my shoes, tripped acid in the rain / Wore my jacket as a cape and my umbrella as a cane.” 

After touring the world as a member of rave-ready EDM outfit The Glitch Mob, Justin Boreta settled into a lower-key solo career as a maker of therapy-minded meditation music and New Age dance beats. His 2025 album Hear the Listener features samples of Zen philosopher Alan Watts and MDMA luminary Ann Shulgin — underscoring his passion for both psychedelics as well as his belief that “music itself is a powerful mood altering drug,” as he once told DoubleBlind.

The Beach Boys song “I Know There’s an Answer” initially had a darker title — “Hang On to Your Ego” — and was written about an acid trip where lead singer Brian Wilson struggled to do just that.

Styles’ album Fine Line was influenced by mushroom journeys right at his recording studio. “We’d do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney’s Ram in the sunshine,” he told Rolling Stone in 2019.

While veering between subversive bedroom pop and gratifying psych rock, this Baltimore-bred songwriter and singer — who went viral with her song “Dumb Dumb” in 2021 — repeatedly returns to plant medicines as a source of inspiration. The intense visuals and introspective insights of LSD have been especially life-changing for her, and she infuses some of her music videos with acidic energy. “It’s extremely powerful, it’s extremely potent, and I feel like I just rapidly developed a sense of self… while having these experiences,” she told DoubleBlind in an interview.

Panic! At the Disco is practically a psychedelic rock band, though they’re not often categorized as such. Just listen to the tune of “Behind the Sea” or the lyrics of “Mad as Rabbits.” Lead singer Brendon Urie has even admitted that “Nine in the Afternoon” was inspired by a trip.

Dirtwire’s Electric River album was inspired by magic mushrooms, with songs that almost take you on a mushroom journey themselves. “Talking Bird” utilizes the African mongongo instrument, which is sometimes used in music for iboga ceremonies, “The Eagle and the Condor” is inspired by an Amazonian prophecy, and “Datura” references the dangerous psychoactive flower.

Australian multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker is certainly among the best-known psychonauts to gain worldwide acclaim in the contemporary era. His band Tame Impala draws on a deep well of psychedelia, and a range of psychoactive comestibles (including LSD as well as more common fare) are known to play a role in his creative process. “I bring booze, weed and food and I’ll record all day, every day,” he told VICE in 2020.

Singer Snow Raven doesn’t use common psychedelics like shrooms or LSD to make her captivating music, in which she is known to imitate bird calls, reindeer breathing, and other animal sounds native to her Siberian Arctic homeland. However, she told DoubleBlind that she channels the “natural, psychedelic state of consciousness” that is central to shamanic practices of her Sakha community: “We believe that our bodies are able to be altered and to be in a transcendental state through drumming, through singing, through chanting.”

In his album Music for Psychedelic Therapy, electronic composer Jon Hopkins shares music meant to enhance psychedelic journeys, ranging from the gentle nature sounds in “Tayos Caves, Ecuador i,” “ii,” and “iii” to the angelic tremolo of “Love Flows Over Us in Prismatic Waves.”

This Mexican-American guitar god has done many great things in his long career, but he and his band first made their mark on rock history with a furious Saturday-afternoon set at Woodstock in 1969 — the recording of which DoubleBlind crowned one of the best psych-rock albums of all time. A key ingredient to their success was some mescaline offered by Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia. “Two hours after I took it, there was a face in my face that said, ‘You need to go on right now, otherwise you’re not going to play,’” Santana recalled to The New York Times. “By this time I was really, really on it, you know? I just held on to my faith, and what my mom taught me. I asked, over and over, ‘Just help me stay in tune and on time.’” 

💌 If you loved this email, forward it to a psychonaut in your life.

Editorial Process

DoubleBlind is a trusted resource for news, evidence-based education, and reporting on psychedelics. We work with leading medical professionals, scientific researchers, journalists, mycologists, indigenous stewards, and cultural pioneers. Read about our editorial policy and fact-checking process here.