PopMatters made a selection of new artists who are expected to brake quite big quite soon (for some it had actually already started to happen). Among the selected there are: Polaris music award winner Backxwash; indie-rock foursome Porridge Radio; critically highly acclaimed Sault; Moscow all-female prog/post-punk girls Lucidvox; genre-defying Bartees Strange.
DIY pop artists and UK rap came big on BBC's Sound of 2021 - a list of the best rising talent in music. English rap maverick Pa Salieu is already breaking it with his debut mixtape 'Send Them to Coventry', and Norway's Girl In Red is big on Spotify with seven million fans playing her lo-fi tales of teenage angst on the service. Others on the list are soul-R'n'B singer Greentea Peng, pop singer Griff, as well as Alfie Templeman, Berwyn, Bree Runway, Dutchavelli, Holly Humberstone, and The Lathums.
LA Times presents Jacob Collier, the British "strange-pop" artist with a jazz background. The 26-year-old of British and Chinese descent wasn't a household name until this week when he was nominated for the Grammy award for album of the year, alongside Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Post Malone and Coldplay. A nice boy...
Alfie Templeman, Pa Salieu, Baby Queen, Biig Piig, Bree Runway, Griff, Holly Humberstone, Ivorian Doll, JOESEF, Olivia Dean, Bklava and others were chosen UK Amazon Music Programming Team as destined for big things in 2021, Music Week reports. These 25 acts will receive support and promotion across the platform over the next 12 months. The list is rounded-up by Berwyn, Christy, Cleopatrick, Dan D’Lion, Dutchavelli, Eli Brown, George Moir, Girl In Red, India Jordan, Joesef, Kamal, Mysie, Olivia Dean, Sharna Bass, Tamera and Zoe Wees.
"Drab City make strangely cinematic music, full of flutes, vibraphones, soft vocals and glitchy beats" - Guardian writes in their newest "One to watch" segment about USA-Berlin duo. They've just released their new album 'Good Songs for Bad People' with "stronger, more haunting songs and a strangeness that feels fitting for our surreal times". Listen to the album in full at Bandcamp here.
California rapper Kamaiyah, a former US security guard, has released a new mixtape 'Got It Made' which shows "a renewed confidence here", the Guardian writes, adding "things seem to be coming together at last". Stereogum says the mixtape is "everything great about her distilled into one mean, fun, breezy half-hour listen. It’s nothing but slaps".
Last month Scarypoolparty released his debut album 'Exit Form' where "he blends the moody, bold electro-rock of Nine Inch Nails with powerful and sincere vocals that bring to mind fellow Idol runner-up Adam Lambert", the Guardian says. Shore Fire like the album even more - "showcases Aranda’s musical and emotional range, expertly fusing fast-paced walls of […]
"Basically we just want to confuse the fuck out of people, in a good way!” - vocalist and guitarist Sydney Minsky-Sargeant of UK band Working Men's Club said about his group. Sonically, they drew comparisons to the Fall, Soft Cell, Parquet Courts, These New Puritans, with lyrics dealing with the today's world - "If people […]
The most interesting, although bizarre, thing about Velvet Negroni, so far, is his childhood story. He was brought up by a strict white evangelical Christian family where secular music was forbidden, but still he had to play the piano at least an hour a day, as Guardian reports. College allowed him to spread his wings, […]
Black Pumas were voted Best New Band at the 2019 Austin Music Awards, and "the songs they’ve assembled on their self-titled debut revivify the sound and feel of 70s soul in a surprisingly fresh way", Guardian writes. They have a debut album (out June 20), "so perfectly realised by the standards they’ve set themselves that […]
Here's how Guardian describes them in a few lines: Amyl and the Sniffers are like a breath of filthy fresh air... Their sound sucks meat from punk and glam’s bones, and throws in basslines from 70s pub-rock... [They] promise swearing, sweat and the short, sharp shock of rock at its gutsiest. Amyl and the Sniffers’ […]
"They fill the stage with noise, overwhelming grooves, songs constricting and then exploding around you. It’s one of those sounds that you think you can trace to a certain collection of antecedents, and yet sounds unlike anything anyone else is up to" - Stereogum says about London quartet Black Midi in their Band to Watch […]
"Disq are finishing up their debut album, which also splits the difference between lightly psychedelic flourishes and more ramshackle singer-songwriter endeavors. Thematically, the new material also finds them in a different, older place — both members remark on how 'most of that first album is girls and heartbreak' whereas the stuff they’re working on now […]
