Bradford bassline and ketamine-charged punk – 50 new artists for 2020
Sports Team
This boisterous six-piece, formed at the University of Cambridge, have garnered serious hype despite indie music being a bit of a cultural backwater of late. Yes, they are outspoken in the press and willing to poke fun at their peers, but the buzz is mostly thanks to their songs, with flamboyant and charismatic frontman Alex Rice stacking up the singalong choruses. Read our interview with them here. BBT
Alyona Alyona
A former kindergarten teacher, Ukranian rapper Alyona Alyona keeps her material clean in case kids are listening. But her music – trap tinged with traditional vocal melodies – is far from toothless. Her breakout hit, Ribki, was about fish, but also young women who feel out of place – just as she did when people kept telling her that a plus-size female rapper would never make it in Ukraine. She raps about her regular life, touching on feminism, body positivity and tolerance, and switched from rapping in Russian back to Ukranian – a “beautiful, soft, tender, more poetic language” – after the country’s 2014 revolution. LS
Normani
Disbanded girl group Fifth Harmony is looking like a pretty successful training ground for a series of solo stars – Lauren Jauregui is currently looking to replicate the success of Camila Cabello, but in with an even better chance is Normani. Her duet with Sam Smith, Dancing With a Stranger, brought maturity and pain to the dancefloor, her solo single Motivation was totally irrepressible, and she is the first artist to get 1bn streams on Spotify without releasing an album. Stardom will surely be sealed when that debut LP arrives this spring. BBT
Kalie Shorr
While there’s probably no greater indictment of country music’s conservatism than the fact that Kalie Shorr remains unsigned, her self-released debut album was likely better off for evading the genre’s nervy gatekeepers. Open Book covers the worst year of the 25-year-old Maine native’s life: her sister’s fatal heroin overdose, Shorr’s anorexia and physical abuse from ex-boyfriends. Astonishingly, she addresses her past with mordant wit and vast reserves of empathy – plus gigantic hooks worthy of Nashville-era Taylor Swift, pop-punk icons Paramore and Jagged Little Pill-era Alanis. LS
Lynks Afrikka
Smeared in lipstick and eyeshadow beneath an impressive collection of ripped masks, the drag persona of Bristol’s Elliot Brett is like Christeene crossed with the Mighty Boosh. His tinny electroclash tracks include the absurd sandwich metaphors of BLLT (“I’m a toastie / The boys they never ghost me / Not all the time but mostly”) and the Str8 Acting’s confusion at going to non-queer nightclubs (“It’s a bit like a pub but with slightly less chairs”), adding up to the kind of English eccentric we need now more than ever. BBT
Twst
Thousands of bedroom producers mimic the sounds of mainstream pop, but few actually pull off its heart-stopping sense of scale. Twst, AKA 21-yearold Wales-born Chloé Davis, is one of them. Her three songs to date suggest St Vincent reborn as an internet-spawned pop star: Girl on Your TV inflates lullaby-worthy melodies like a swelling Thanksgiving parade balloon, and she slips razor-sharp observations about sexualisation and the lie of technology into her lyrics. Always, a wracked conversation with Siri, plays like a Gen Z makeover of Kate Bush’s Deeper Understanding. LS
El Alfa
The idea that El Alfa is in any way a 2020 hopeful will seem ludicrous to the Dominican Republic-born dembow artist’s fans, who have watched his charismatic, booty-heavy videos upwards of 20m, 30m, 40m times. Collaborations with major players such Cardi B, Bad Bunny, J Balvin and Diplo speak to someone who is well on their way to the top, thanks very much. But in the UK, where awareness and exposure of Latinx pop remains limited, his bratty vocal trills and fire-starting energy could easily see him swoop in and conquer the charts in 2020. LS
Jesse James Solomon
Solomon released his first EP in 2014, and has since become a true cult figure – a storytelling south London MC who doesn’t fit into any of the neat British rap boxes (grime, backpacker, drill, Afro trap), but walks his own path. The excellent 2019 mixtape Bleak sat somewhere between Frank Ocean, King Krule and A Tribe Called Quest, a downbeat trudge through a rainswept night – but new single Tit for Tat is quite the opposite, a crisply headnodding roller with a Giggs guest spot. BBT
Chippy Nonstop
Starting the decade as a rapper whose wittily trashy aesthetic made Nicki Minaj look like Audrey Hepburn, Toronto-based Chippy Nonstop ended it as one of the most purely enjoyable
DJs out there. A typical set can take in dancehall, Miami bass, R&B, trap, jungle, Afrobeats and more – all of it seemingly designed to goad anyone, however inappropriately, into feverish twerking on all fours. BBT
Nala Sinephro
Keen watchers of recent performances by south-east London jazz collective Steam Down may have spotted Nala Sinephro performing alongside the likes of Rosie Turton and Nadeem Din-Gabisi. She’ll take the spotlight in 2020 to release her beguiling debut album: backed by a small ensemble, the Caribbean-Belgian musician plays pedal harp through modular and analogue synths, the effect gorgeously woozy and tidal – and not unworthy of comparison to Alice Coltrane. LS
Lady Lykez
By blending the firehose delivery of jungle MCs with lipsmacking lyricism, wavey bashment energy and deadpan darts of pure disparagement (“yuh pussy have gangrene”), Lady Lykez is a formidable British rap talent. Live shows are a riot of audience participation, and she found a perfect foil in producer Scratcha DVA for her 2019 EP Muhammad Ali – like him, she delivers on claims of greatness. BBT
Lynda Dawn
First heard when Gilles Peterson put her song Move on the November 2018 edition of his Brownswood Bubblers compilation, London classicist Lynda Dawn harks back to Whitney Houston’s earliest work with boogie pioneer Kashif. Like Houston, Dawn was raised in the Pentecostal church and her gospel-influenced vocals dazzle like shafts of light through a stained-glass window. LS
Sech
Despacito is looking more and more like a one-off: few of the Latin artists who get literally billions of streams elsewhere in the world cross over to the UK mainstream. But if anyone can, it’s ursine Panamanian singer Sech, whose voice is deeper and earthier than peers such as Ozuna, Bad Bunny or Maluma – he croons it over keeningly romantic R&B, powered by the relentless hipswing of reggaeton. After the success of Latin Grammy-nominated single Otro Trago, be sure that he’s beavering away on the song of the summer. BBT
Charlène Darling
Borrowing her name from the Andy Griffith Show character, Paris’s Charlène Darling makes off-kilter, shimmering chanson post-punk that connects the dots between the feminist troubadours of Agnès Varda’s L’Une Chante, L’Autre Pas, Thai molam music, the Raincoats and the way Cate Le Bon slides between bucolic melody and clanging post-punk. Her debut album, Saint-Guidon, is one of 2019’s buried treasures. LS
The New Death Cult
With their skull masks, black robes and unequivocally morbid band name, the New Death Cult look like a threatening cross between drill rappers and black metallers. But actually, a bit like their fellow Scandi bands Motorpsycho and the Night Flight Orchestra, the Norwegian quartet sit at the tunefully proggy end of classic rock. There’s a fair bit of neanderthal chugging, but songs such as True Eyes show their range, with a smoky, soulful sweetness. BBT
Meggie Brown
There’s a ruthless energy to Meggie Cousland. The London musician has said she uses ketamine to help write her prowling, Cramps-tinged punk, some of which she has recorded with Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos in Edwyn Collins’s studio. She fired one band when they weren’t cutting the mustard: her new, eight-strong rabble supply intimidating gang vocals on recent single I Said Salute Me, which finds Cousland ordering a crush who doesn’t return her ardour to drop and give her 20 in a Rocky Horror-worthy refrain. Odd tactic, but you wouldn’t say no to her. LS
Marsicans
This Leeds indie quartet have the same slick arena-indie heft of Foals, Two Door Cinema Club and Circa Waves. They released their first recordings back in 2014, and have lurked around the big time ever since – but could finally break through thanks to some of their strongest songs yet, such as the heavy yet deft single Your Eyes.
BBT
Destiny Rogers
Although she taught herself to play guitar from watching videos of Justin Bieber on YouTube, 20-year-old Californian Destiny Rogers sounds more like Ariana Grande in the way she conceals sharp truths in her effervescent, hip-hop-inflected vocal runs. “I don’t do no favours for the studio time,” she states on calling card Tomboy, its chorus an excellent tribute to Cher’s motto: “Mom, Iam a rich man.”LS
Beatrice Dillon
Somewhere between the primly playful dub techno of Moritz Von Oswald and the bright science of Mark Fell sits Beatrice Dillon, a truly magical electronic producer whose tracks are as airy, spacious and elegantly designed as a modernist library. But you needn’t be hushed and reverent: there is even a strain of absurdist humour to the way it all hangs together, and that sense of fun suffuses her unmissable DJ sets, too. Read our interview with her here. BBT
Pillow Queens
The Dublin four-piece embody the shared DNA between first-wave emo and country, putting their tender approach and keen, hooky song craft in service of empathetic songs about male bonding (Brothers) and body image (HowDoILook), and slyly subversive punk: Gay Girls turns the names of the saints into a list of crushes. Together since 2016, the four women are aiming to release their debut album in 2020. LS
Mass Worship
Start the strength conditioning exercises for the sternocleidomastoid muscles in your neck, because this Stockholm “darkened metal” band invite the kind of deep, profound headbanging that could put you in bed with a whiplash injury. Having been recorded somewhere called Fuck Life Studios, their self-titled debut album is stern, abrasive and kicks total, utter and comprehensive ass: all righteous downforce and terrifying declarations. BBT
Cable Ties
Formed in Melbourne’s DIY punk scene, Cable Ties have signed to US indie Merge to release their second album in 2020. Their rough, determined ragers evoke Against Me! and the Velvet Underground, and in Jenny McKechnie they have a wailing tempest to rival Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker. “Why don’t you walk out your bedroom and steal your brother’s guitar,” she suggests on Tell Them Where to Go, an irresistible call to arms. LS
Bad Boy Chiller Crew
A hyperlocal phenomenon in their native Bradford, Bad Boy Chiller Crew make ridiculously enjoyable bassline house anthems topped with dextrous patter about beer, designer clothes and *checks notes* the excellence of an obscure Teesside car wash called Billy’s. They’re the sort of people that get dismissed as chavs (or, to use their reclaimed Bradford version, “charvas”), but their breezy good humour is what makes this country great – and tracks such as 450 and Pablo genuinely bang. BBT
Badsista
Brazilian producer Badsista has been a crucial part of the São Paulo scene for a few years now, as much for her activism – she’s part of Bandida, a collective organising parties where only women and non-binary people