In recent years, studying degenerate versions of some special polynomials, which was initiated by Carlitz in an investigation of the degenerate Bernoulli and Euler polynomials, regained lively interest of many mathematicians. In this paper, as a degenerate version of polyexponential functions introduced by Hardy, we study degenerate polyexponential functions and derive various properties of them. Also, we introduce new type degenerate Bell polynomials, which are different from the previously studied partially degenerate Bell polynomials and arise naturally in the recent study of degenerate zero-truncated Poisson random variables, and deduce some of their properties. Furthermore, we derive some identities connecting the polyexponential functions and the new type degenerate Bell polynomials.