Pakistani rock is the Urdu-language (occasionally English- or Punjabi-mixed) rock developed from 1986 in Islamabad and Karachi. The three foundational bands are Vital Signs (Junaid Jamshed, Rohail Hyatt, Shahzad Hassan, Nusrat Hussain, formed 1986), Junoon (Salman Ahmad, Ali Azmat, Brian O'Connell, 1990) and Strings (Bilal Maqsood, Faisal Kapadia, 1988), followed by Noori, Call, Fuzon, Aaroh and Entity Paradigm (Atif Aslam's early band). Setups are standard 4-5 piece rock; Junoon added rabab, tanbura and sitar. Lyrics deal with love but also with post-Zia (post-1988) social change, urban youth identity, and — in the Junoon subgenre — Sufi poetry.

The catalyst was Vital Signs' 'Dil Dil Pakistan' on PTV on 14 August 1987 (Independence Day). The song came with the country's first professionally produced music video (directed by Shoaib Mansoor), and it overwrote Pakistan's music soundscape overnight — Junaid Jamshed's clean tenor and Rohail Hyatt's Yamaha DX7 pads sounded nothing like the Bollywood-derived pop that had dominated PTV until then. BBC named it one of the world's most popular songs in 2003. Salman Ahmad left Vital Signs to form Junoon in 1990, and Junoon's 1997 'Sayonee' (from Azadi) defined Sufi rock. When Pakistan and India tested nuclear weapons in May 1998, Junoon toured India a week later — a symbolic cross-border music-diplomacy event.

Junaid Jamshed's vocal choice on 'Dil Dil Pakistan' is important — he deliberately dropped the Ghazal-style ornamentation that Pakistani male singers of the era relied on, in favor of a clean Anglo-rock tenor. That single choice set the template for Pakistani rock's vocal identity. Rohail Hyatt's DX7 bell pads sound of a piece with contemporaneous New Order and Depeche Mode.

Vital Signs 'Dil Dil Pakistan' (1987), Junoon 'Sayonee' (1996), Strings 'Duur' (2000), and Atif Aslam 'Aadat' (2004) as the bridge from rock to pop.

Junaid Jamshed left music in the 2000s to become an Islamic preacher, then died in the Pakistan International Airlines PK-661 crash near Havelian on 7 December 2016 (aged 52). Brian O'Connell of Junoon is an American who met Salman Ahmad at SUNY Tarrytown and moved to Lahore to co-found the band.