13 Up-and-Coming Acts You Need to Know

Manchester three-piece Nightbus’s atmospheric, dreamily-unsettling blend of synths, New Order-esque basslines, guitars that alternately shimmer or stab, and singer Olive Rees’s eerily seductive/spooky voice, calls to mind all the lonely, dislocated beauty of a city at night, while maintaining a firm grip on the concept of a song as a three-minute medium. Reportedly signed before even playing their first gig and still only a couple of singles into their career, you’d do well to catch them now, just so you have something to boast about when tickets are impossible to come by next year. -- Dominic Utton

Baltimore-born, London-based artist Marcus Brown made a big splash last year with Erotic Probiotic 2, his debut full-length under the name Nourished by Time. His moniker doubles as a description of his modus operandi, consuming decades of pop music history and spitting it back out as idiosyncratic, genre-agnostic DIY synth-pop and soul. He signed to XL Recordings for the release of the new EP Catching Chickens last week, and his future is looking mighty tasty right about now. -- Peter Helman

Of all the innumerable younger bands mining the shoegaze tradition for inspiration, few have a more immediate, arresting appeal than Glixen. Driven by singer-guitarist Aislinn Ritchie, the Phoenix four-piece first drew attention with their 2023 debut EP, and this year’s single “foreversoon” already feels like a significant evolution. Glixen have a second EP on the way, and a slot opening for Interpol in their hometown next month will put the band in front of their largest audience yet. Expect to see them capitalize. -- Andrew Barker

As a Mexican queer musician that spins hot inside the LGBTQ+ environment, Robles has drawn acclaim for his vulnerability and honesty, stemming first from a musical theater background and then the New York City club scene. His most recent release, 2024’s Ugly Crier (Deluxe), is an 11-song mix of heady, ethereal pop, and the standout collab with Lexxe, “I Just Wanna Dance!” has the right amount of emotional tartness and happiness that could make Ariana Grande and Charlie XCX turn around and notice. – Amy Hughes

They've been compared to everyone from the Doors to Dexys Midnight Runners, but this U.K. band has a sound that’s an amalgam of so many artists that it can change from song to song...or sometimes even within a song. Indeed, sometimes they sound like they’ve dropped straight out of a time warp, offering up the sort of pop that you’d expect to find on an old Stiff Records compilation. Okay, maybe that’s partly the work of having Dave Robinson in their corner, but it’s far more to do with having loads of talent. -- Will Harris

With debut album Ignore This released April 5, Scottish power-pop-punk noise merchants Dead Pony make a noise as rowdy as it is exciting. A string of wildly gleeful singles including “About Love" and “MK Nothing" (presumably not an ode to the Buckinghamshire new town, though frankly, who knows?) combine heavily fuzzed-up guitars, retro synths, smart samples and a furious bass/drum sound with a deceptively melodic vocal, and have attracted attention from outlets as diverse as Kerrang! and Radio 1. The velocity rarely drops below about 100mph, but sometimes that’s exactly what you need. -- D.U.

The New York-based MC has been kicking around for a while now, but it feels like Gabe ‘Nandez's moment in the spotlight is drawing nearer and nearer. Alternately melancholy and aggressive, cerebral and direct, this is a rapper who always seems to be well within his comfort zone: whether he’s rapping in English or French, spitting off-the-cuff freestyles or laying down rewind-worthy rhymes on tracks like the mini-epic "Louis XIV" from last year’s album Pangea. -- A.B.

This eclectic pop artist is only 19, but it seems like he already has the music industry in the palm of his hand. Glaive’s first full-length studio album I Care So Much That I Don't Care at All came out on Interscope Records last year, but he’s already managed to top it with his new EP A Bit of a Mad One. It seems like Glaive’s signature hyperpop madness should conflict with the release’s pensive acoustic guitar interludes and unsettling samples, but they actually complement each other perfectly. There’s something strangely spiritual about the dichotomy. -- Noah Zucker

Where so many of the current crop of TikTok-friendly shoegaze and dream-pop acts are content to coast along on vibes alone, Wishy has honest-to-god songs. Nina Pitchkites and Kevin Krauter, former high school classmates who bonded over a mutual love of — what else? — My Bloody Valentine and the Sundays, trade off songwriting and vocal duties but share a similarly dazed, mellow-yet-muscular melodic sensibility. The Indiana-based band is still working on a full-length follow-up to last year's Paradise EP, and we should all be wishing for its swift arrival. -- P.H.

Beihold has listed her influences as Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor and Feist among her many influences. If you take a shaker to all those and add the magical sprinkler that is wholly Beihold, you end up with a major hit: 2022’s “Numb Little Bug.” As an LA-based singer-songwriter, Beihold has emerged from the countless artists that she could count as peers and honed her clean pop essence into something akin to a best friend that can jump into conversations quite easily. – A.H.

These Atlanta-based heshers are unrelentingly heavy, but that doesn’t mean they’re no fun. The band’s early sound could be described as competent mathcore, but they also explored pop, nu metal and more on their latest EP, God Smiles Upon the Callous Daoboys. The lineup already includes an electric violin, which is almost too much fun to handle. The band’s well-considered and often genuinely inventive music videos bring them to another level. The paranormal reality TV-themed promotional clips for the new EP are worth watching. -- N.Z.

The defiantly quirky, madly infectious songs on Sons of Ken’s debut album We Are The Kens are almost impossible not to dance to. The project of Michael Moran and Spike Burridge, We Are The Kens is an unashamed mash-up of Big Beat, early Chemicals, a bit of Rock Steady Crew-era hip-hop, a touch of KLF, a pinch of Daft Punk, a dash of Thomas Dolby, a whole lot of disco… and if they wear their 80s and 90s influences on their sleeves, then frankly they’re all the better for it. We Are The Kens is released on May 3, with a listening party the night before. -- D.U.

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This Scottish band is self-described as “a Scottish, female-led 5-piece who play alt-rock for the soul,” and that seems like as reasonable a description as any. They released their debut EP, Blue Parrot Backpackers Hostel, in 2022, but you can already hear their musical evolution within the two new singles they’ve released since then (“Crave!” and “Cruel”). Word on the street is that they’ll have additional new music to offer this year, so keep your fingers crossed, because everything we’ve heard thus far suggests that they’re only getting better. -- W.H.