Ukrainian hardcore, Nigerian alté and Red Bull-soaked bloghouse: 2023’s most promising musical newcomers

Marina Allen

From Los Angeles, US
Marina Allen wears songwriterly classicism with incredible lightness: there are tinges of Brill Building doyennes such as Laura Nyro to her conversational piano playing and lilting voice; of west coast wonder to her open-hearted and unflinching lyricism. Her second album, 2022’s gorgeous Centrifics, was produced by Cass McCombs and Weyes Blood collaborator Chris Cohen, and represented Allen daring herself to say “yes” to being honest with herself, to write her way out of rumination. LS
Recommended if you like Joanna Newsom, Cassandra Jenkins, Carole King
Up next Touring the UK from 8-15 February

The Dare

From New York, US
With his debut single Girls, the Dare’s Harrison Patrick Smith drags listeners, kicking and screaming, back into the heady, Red Bull-soaked days of bloghouse. It’s an immaculate period piece: Smith commits to the bit, stuffing Girls with blocky synths, a rave-up chorus and appropriately vapid lyrics: “I like the girls that do drugs / Girls with cigarettes in the back of the club / Girls that hate cops and buy guns.” A toxic and fiendishly intoxicating environment. SD
RIYL LCD Soundsystem, LMFAO, the Rapture
Up next New music coming 2023

Death Pill

From Kyiv, Ukraine
Mariana Navrotskaya, Anastasiya Khomenko and Natalya Seryakova formed Death Pill to rebel against the limited expectations of women they grew up surrounded by; the music they make torches those standards, a tirade of metalcore, thrash and hardcore threaded by Navrotskaya’s barbed-wire howl and apparently unsparing lyrics (the lead single, Расцарапаю Ебало, means Scratch Asshole and is aimed directly at her ex). Their debut has taken on an added layer of defiance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which scattered the trio across three different countries and forced them to finish it remotely, not that you’d know it: it’s a face-toasting listen. LS
RIYL The Distillers, Circle Jerks, Bikini Kill
Up next Debut album Death Pill released 24 February on New Heavy Sounds

McKinley Dixon

From Chicago, US
Tellingly, it’s not a hip-hop peer that Dixon cites as the greatest rapper of all time, but the late author Toni Morrison. That should give you a clue as to the themes of McKinley’s rhyming, which address the hope, trauma and brutality faced by Black Americans with vulnerability and defiance. He’s been releasing albums for a little while – including For My Mama and Anyone Who Looks Like Her on Matthew E White’s Spacebomb label in 2021 – but his gorgeous 2023 full-length looks set to put him on the map: it opens with a recording of poet Hanif Abdurraqib reading Toni Morrison and flows between the sounds of spiritual jazz, sax worthy of Clarence Clemons and blown-out distortion. LS
RIYL Kendrick Lamar, Kamasi Washington, Saba
Up next New album coming in 2023

GloRilla

From Memphis, US
Watching GloRilla’s music video for her Cardi B collaboration Tomorrow 2 is an exercise in cognitive dissonance: here’s one of the most glamorous women you might ever see on camera unleashing a deep, forceful growl of a voice, like Juicy J in a black bikini. That’s just a small part of the joy of the GloRilla experience – the Memphis rapper broke out with this year’s FNF (Let’s Go), a gleeful misandrist anthem about turning up with the girls. The rest of her Anyways, Life’s Great … EP finds a similar kind of simple joy in hanging out, being hot, and straight up vibing. SD
RIYL Trina, Gangsta Boo, Megan Thee Stallion
Up next New music coming 2023

Handle

From Manchester, England
Handle synthesise dance-rock, samba, free jazz and drone music into a brilliantly bizarre version of post-punk. The band’s three members – Leo Hermitt, Giulio Erasmus and Nirvana Heire – all have roots in the Manchester DIY scene, but the genealogy of Handle’s music is difficult to place: chintzy synth stabs and guitar samples feel of a piece with indie experimentalists such as Kate NV, but there’s something anarchic and confrontational about Hermitt’s yelped vocals. Their debut album, 2020’s In Threes, is like a speed run through some primitive video game; the band bound and tumble through their own music at breakneck pace. SD
RIYL James Chance, Captain Beefheart, Dry Cleaning
Up next Touring Europe in January; new album coming early 2023

Izzy Spears

From Atlanta, US
Monstar, the debut EP by Atlanta’s Izzy Spears, is a fast, horny and violent take on indie-punk and dance-pop – think queercore as filtered through the lens of 2022’s high-contrast, heavily saturated genreless pop. Unlike so many of the punk-aesthetic wannabe pop stars currently trying to break through, Spears has bite as well as bark: his lyrics can be blushingly blue (“What’s your deadname? What gets you off?” he growls on Better; “Limp / Suck a little dick” goes the chorus of Fist) and Monstar has some real grit thanks to production from Yves Tumor and Dusk Driven – a welcome respite in a pop landscape that can sometimes feel as if it’s lost its fangs. SD
RIYL Yves Tumor, Bloc Party, Nine Inch Nails
Up next New EP coming spring 2023

Jennifer Loveless

From Melbourne, Australia
Despite her name, Jennifer Loveless makes a nostalgic, deeply romantic kind of dance music: her take on house and techno carries the swoosh and sparkle of lamé caught in midday sun. Her third EP, 2022’s Around the World, is a record of effortless elan, the stretchy bass of opener Musik giving way to disorientating, minimalist disco; Fall in Love is a starry-eyed cut destined to play as the final song on 7am dancefloors everywhere. After a few years playing some of the world’s coolest dance festivals and sharing bills with headliners such as Peggy Gou and DJ Sprinkles, 2023 is primed to be a banner year for Loveless. SD
RIYL Daphni, Jayda G, DJ Python
Up next New music coming 2023; playing Edinburgh’s Terminal V festival in April

Lana Lubany

From Palestine
Splicing elegant guitarand fluttering handclaps with shadowy, gothic production and hints of Timbaland’s most adventurous Y2K work, Palestine-raised Lana Lubany looks set to do for Arabic pop what Rosalía did for flamenco: they share a respect for tradition but an even greater respect for pop innovation. Her song The Snake was an unlikely TikTok hit: a dramatic, elegant waltz that shudders as the bass deepens, it’s one of three tracks from a forthcoming project, The Holy Land, about temptation and indulgence. LS
RIYL Rosalía, Billie Eilish, Arooj Aftab
Up next The Holy Land full-length project and her first London show

New Pagans

From Belfast, Northern Ireland
The five-piece’s second album offers the distinct pleasure of watching a good band transform into a great one: Lyndsey McDougall’s choruses hit like those of Paramore’s Hayley Williams at her most anguished and empathic as her sharp lyrics find solace in taking life slowly, in community and the vision of domesticity suggested by Derek Jarman. Meanwhile the band hurtle through life-affirming pop-punk and sparkling post-rock that intermittently bites hard and offers a cavernous sense of embrace. LS
RIYL Paramore, Frightened Rabbit, Sonic Youth
Up next Second album Making Circles of Our Own released 17 February on Big Scary Monsters

Skaiwater

From Nottingham, England
Skaiwater’s intimate, teeming productions have the haziness of photocopies or in-between radio frequencies, the ghosts of Jersey club, EDM, classic rave and even pop-punk bubbling up alongside their disarmingly candid, catchy Auto-Tuned confessions. Their lovely viral hit #miles caught the ear of US rapper Lil Uzi Vert, who not only joined them on a remix of the song but introduced them to Lil Nas X, whom Skaiwater supported on his big recent European tour: the rare young British producer to make their US peers look up. LS
RIYL PinkPantheress, Juice Wrld, 100 Gecs
Up next A revamped version of their 2022 Rave mixtape

Somadina

From Lagos, Nigeria
Somadina made her name as one of Nigeria’s rising stars of alté – a descendant of afrobeats that incorporates elements of dancehall and R&B – but her debut project Heart of the Heavenly Undeniable, released in 2022, pulls in influences from all angles, touching on spare soul, pop-punk and trance. She is a chameleonic talent, and she has a strong sense for aesthetics too – her lo-fi music videos and punky fashion sense were inspired by classic Nollywood films – making her a clear challenger for the throne of Gen Z’s next great polymath. SD
RIYL Erykah Badu, Tems, Willow
Up next Playing the Great Escape, Brighton, in May