The question of what constitutes an independent artist in 2016 is a slightly vexed one. Is it still someone signed to an independent label, or have advances in technology changed the traditional definition? What is an independent label anyway? Does a small label financially supported by a major, but left free to make its own A&R decisions count, or are they just lapdogs of the evil music industry? In a world where Jme can make the charts, apparently without any of the traditional blandishments of the music industry – “no label, no manager, no publisher, no PR”, as his Twitter biog boasts – are the truly independent artists the ones who go it entirely alone, self-producing and releasing everything they do? If you self-release your music with the aid of a bit of cash from another source – YouTube or a streaming service, or sponsorship from a drink or clothing company – does that compromise your claim to independence?
You could argue about it for hours, but perhaps it’s best to say that, in 2016, independence is something less to do with your financial arrangements or means of distribution than with a certain spirit. The artists in the list below veer about wildly in terms of commerciality: it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Abra or Lil Yachty in the Top 40, a little harder to picture the same thing happening to Anenon’s improvisation-based blend of electronica and jazz, or indeed, Cabbage’s recent EP Uber Capitalist Death Trade.
But the one thing they have in common is that they don’t sound like people who have been told what to do by other people who think they know what makes music successful. In that sense, they are at odds with the kind of artists you tend to find in the BBC Sound Of polls or the Brit Critics’ Choice shortlist: the big-hitters that major labels have decided are going to make them a lot of cash. A lot of that music sounds like the result of extensive market research, with literally inevitable results: it plays it safe, closely resembling stuff people are already buying. So this year’s hotly tipped alt-rock band sounds remarkably like last year’s most successful alt-rock band. This year’s big new singer-songwriters sound remarkably like last year’s big singer-songwriters, influence of wafty electronica and all. This year’s pretender to the mainstream pop throne seems to have used exactly the same songwriters, producers and Auto-Tune settings as the star they are trying to knock off their perch.
You can’t blame big record labels for playing it safe – these are tough times for the music business – but caution leads to ossification: if you are looking for a reason why huge swathes of the charts sound remarkably homogenous – as if you could swap the names of the artists responsible around and no one would really notice – then there it is.
Perhaps the commercial success of Skepta’s chart-topping, Mercury-winning Konichiwa – an album that self-evidently hasn’t been focus-grouped into existence – might cause a rethink of this approach. Perhaps not. Either way, in the meantime, here are 50 new artists, independent in the sense that they are acting on impulse and instinct; doing what they want, rather than what they are told.
Alexis Petridis
In one long, breathless rush, Abra is telling me the story of the teenage rock band she was once a part of. “It was with my ex and all his roommates and it was crazy,” she recalls. “When we would fight it was always, like, ‘Band practice is off! Band practice is on!’ But our shows were really good, super intense and passionate, and I had this really good chemistry with the guitarist – who wasn’t my boyfriend – and so …” She clocks my surprise and laughs: “I know, right? We didn’t play many shows!”
Speaking to Abra is an almost completely different experience to listening to her music. On record she can be raw and unflinching, putting her emotions on the frontline over a skeleton of minimalist electro-R&B. It is music that chimes with her mysterious online persona, in which she styles herself as the “Darkwave Duchess” and refuses to reveal her real name or age. Yet here she is now, giggling away through stories of acid trips and teenage distress, with precious little guard up.
Getting a grip on just who Abra is can be tricky because it seems to have taken her some time to work it out too. Growing up as the daughter of church missionaries, she spent formative years in south London, New York and Atlanta, living a displaced life in which “music, art and books were the only constant”. Her strict religious upbringing meant that listening options were reduced to Christian music – in church, she would often cry at the stacked harmonies – or old folk songs, which inevitably left her feeling like something of an outsider among her peers. “I couldn’t bring up Scarborough Fair to someone in my third-grade class,” she laughs. “They weren’t listening to that!”
Yet she accepts now that these unique influences shaped her sound today, which absorbs old and modern influences, from gospel to avant-R&B via Chicago house, Britney Spears and smooth 80s pop. Just listen to the stunning CRYBABY, or indeed any song from this year’s mini-album PRINCESS, and you will likely be floored by the mix of 808 rhythms, chiming synths and soulful topline melodies. It is music full of nods to the past that nevertheless sounds thoroughly modern.
There are two musical events that seem to have greatly shaped Abra’s career. The first was while suffering depression as a teenager, when she would sit on her bed crying and listening to the radio. “One day, the station 94.9 was playing Christmas songs and I said to myself – I know this sounds cheesy – but I said: ‘If there’s anything out there that believes I’m worth a damn, I just need a sign!’ And then this record came on. I just connected with it so much, it was beautiful and I wanted to be able to make something that beautiful.”
That record was Peter, Paul and Mary’s A Soalin’, and it prompted Abra to pick up a guitar and spend weeks learning it. Soon she had mastered all kinds of songs, and her aptitude for cover versions – from Radiohead’s All I Need to Waka Flocka Flame’s No Hands – bore fruit when the YouTube videos she posted under the name Hurricane Gabrielle began going viral. She progressed to writing her own material but wasn’t convinced she was on the right track until a hallucinogenic experience finally showed her the light.
“I accidentally triple-dosed on acid,” she says, somewhat casually. “Later that night, I had time to listen to my music and reflect. I realised that I’d been hiding myself away and that the only part of me I showed to people was the sad side. This music that was supposed to show me that I was worth a damn wasn’t even making me feel better.”
She resolved to stop writing what she dismissively calls “sad-girl shit” and work on showcasing her steelier, more independent side. Hooking up with Atlanta’s misfit enclave Awful Records only encouraged her further. Home to outsider hip-hop artists such as Father, Slug Christ and Archibald Slim, and with ties to Drake and Makonnen, the DIY collective persuaded her to stop working with her then-producer and follow her own path. “They gave me the confidence because they’re fiercely independent,” she says. “Slug Christ makes his own beats, produces, mixes, masters … does it all, and that’s the first time I’d seen any of that. I loved being around them. And I got into a lot of trouble with them, too.”
What kind of trouble?
“Oh, all kinds. Things blew up really fast and there was this sense of invincibility in the air around everyone, this feeling that we could do everything, so we did everything, you know? Messing with drugs and living a fast life … it got kind of reckless for a little bit, but I feel we’ve all reached equilibrium now. We don’t go back there, but we can look back with a lot of stories to tell.”
To this day, Abra’s set up remains pretty DIY. PRINCESS was recorded, as was her previous albums Rose and BLQ Velvet, on a laptop in her bedroom closet – just her, a £40 USB mic, a Midi keyboard and Logic. Yet the results are anything but dashed off. Abra says she spent weeks agonising over CRYBABY, trying to work out what was too much, and what wasn’t enough. In general, though, she sticks to a simple rule: “Build it from the ground up and when I feel like I get goosebumps from hearing it, I’m done.”
With so many different emotions, genres and personalities thrown into her music, it has been a source of frustration to Abra in the past to see her music labelled simply as R&B, something she says only happens because she is a black female singer. These days, though, she is more relaxed about it, partly because she has accepted just how important an influence R&B has been to her (“I respect so many people in R&B and wouldn’t be where I am without it”) and partly because she is finally at peace with who she is as an artist, and where she is going.
“At the end of the day, you’re the ones putting the labels on,” she laughs. “I’m the one making the content, so I’m doing OK.” Tim Jonze
Before her schedule was full of actual press requests, Jorja Smith used to concoct them. “When I worked at Starbucks back in Walsall, I’d do fake phone interviews in the stockroom to pass the time,” she says. Perhaps cautious about seeming diva-ish, she quickly adds: “It was good, though. I met some great people there.” After another brief stint as a barista when she relocated to London at the end of 2015, the 19-year-old is now concentrating on music full time, as one of the country’s most talked about unsigned acts. Having studied classical singing, piano and oboe – eventually giving up the latter after she forgot to breathe during a lesson and passed out – Smith wrote songs in her bedroom before putting some online and bagging a management deal at 16.
However, it was this year that things really blew up, when she melded Dizzee Rascal’s Sirens with a haunting 80s piano sample and her own stirring, timely lyricism to tell the story of a youngster caught up with the police. “I literally just wrote Blue Lights sitting on my bed. I didn’t think it would be that big,” she says. Since then, Smith has shown the versatility of her simultaneously fragile and powerful vocals with tracks including a drum’n’bass/reggae collaboration with Cadenza and Dre Island, and a Henry Purcell-inspired R&B track with Irish rapper Maverick Sabre, with a debut four-track EP to follow imminently.
Although she has had a typical Gen Z trajectory, she is an old soul who seems largely unconcerned with fame: she is not too into social media, watches little TV – bar documentaries – and chart pop largely passes her by (she collapses in giggles when she accidentally attributes a Jay Sean song to Justin Bieber). Plus, she has no plans to put the record labels out of their misery quite yet. Where does she see herself in the future? “Very happy. With a smile on my face.” Out of the mouth of an X Factor wannabe, it might sound glib, but from a striking, unpretentious talent, it is just what you hope to hear. Hannah J Davies
Wyatt and Fletcher Shears, the twin brothers from Californian who make up the Garden, have noticed something about their shows. “The majority of our crowd is under 21,” Wyatt says. “I don’t know why. I’d like to be able to appeal to everyone, to make universal music. Our lyrics speak about the future and to the youth, and maybe someone in their late 20s and early 30s can’t identify with that.”
He shouldn’t fret. What makes the Garden so exciting is the sense that they are the generation gap brought to life: what they do is so captivatingly youthful that you almost want older people to hate them. Wyatt plays bass, Fletcher drums, and – accompanied by some triggered effects and beats – they play something that sounds like 50 different genres and none at all, with the velocity of hardcore and the angularity of post-punk fighting their way through most clearly.
“For us, the whole idea of genre is pointless,” Wyatt says. “It can be useful if you like a certain kind of artist, and they’re classified with people who sound like them. But we aren’t classified with anyone who sounds like us. It’d be interesting for the future to be less genre classified.”
Though they have recorded plenty of music – and, really, what’s not to love about a 16-track, 18-minute album called The Life and Times of a Paperclip? – you are best off catching the Garden for the first time live. Wyatt, who might be dressed as an Elizabethan jester, performs ballet pirouettes around the stage between vocal lines; halfway through the set, Fletcher – in zombie-deathmask paint when I saw them in September – hurdles his drum kit and they perform a hip-hop interlude, while they somersault and tumble around each other. “Wyatt and I used to go to a lot of shows, and it’s not super-fun to watch bands stand there and do nothing,” Fletcher says. “We enjoy playing like a jester would, entertaining the crowd; you want to do whatever your body says. You get into it uncomplicatedly.”
Prepare to be amazed. One way or the other. Michael Hann
In the war against gentrification, hardcore punks Show Me the Body are taking the fight outdoors. “The last show we played in New York was on the street,” says bassist Harlan Steed. “A lot of the great venues are shutting down, so lately we’ve found that finding our own space to play our shows is really more ideal for us.”
The concept is simple enough. At short notice, the trio will set up a gig in a public space – an underpass, a backstreet, a square – spread the word and perform either to completion or until the police shut them down. “You’ve got to be smart about it,” explains vocalist Julian Cashwan Pratt. “You’ve got to not put too many bands on the bill, only have one or two artists. You go to Home Depot that day and rent a generator. If you return it that same day, it only costs 60 bucks.”
It’s this sort of homespun ingenuity that has marked Show Me The Body as one of the most distinctive DIY bands around. Part of Letter Racer – a collective that also features avant-garde rap group Ratking as well as artists and designers – they have taken the sense of community and anti-commercialism that marked out the hardcore scene of the 80s and updated it for an age where genre lines have begun to grow blurry.
Sonically, their work reflects the complex cacophony that makes up 21st-century New York. Debut album Body War is a bewildering slew of warring sounds: deafening hardcore breakdowns, shards of industrial noise, hip-hop and, most curiously of all, the haunting, discordant tones of a banjo. Lyrically, they are no less confrontational, Cashwan Pratt’s nervy, barked hip-hop rhymes reflecting a society where police brutality is chillingly routine and property is increasingly in the hands of a moneyed few.
“We have a war over space all the time here. People are getting kicked out of their homes, venues are closing,” Steed explains. For a band rebelling against this status quo the situation is stark. “If you’re doing something that’s actually for young kids who don’t have a lot of money, and for a scene that isn’t about making money, it’s going to be difficult,” he adds.
Still, Show Me the Body are up for the fight. In recent months they have taken their uprising global, including putting on one of their free public shows in another rapidly gentrifying area – Dalston in east London. For Cashwan Pratt the objective is clear. “Keep going, make more music, organise more kids. That’s the goal.” Gwilym Mumford
Neverland Clan are not just the world’s gnarliest boyband. They are a way of life. “It’s a thing of not growing up,” the group’s Ryan Hawaii says of their manifesto. “Never forgetting your youth and always wanting to put yourself first in terms of what you want to do and your dreams. I am 21 and with the pressures of having to work; [Neverland Clan is] about not allowing that to corrupt what you want to do. Being free. Living for yourself and your own happiness.”
Just as Odd Future tore a hole through the new boring with their cartoonish artistry and anarchy, Neverland Clan are DIY superheroes preparing to disrupt from the underbelly of the UK hip-hop scene. Mostly based in south-east London, they are a community of creatives in their teens and early 20s, thriving in a microcosm of musicians, designers, illustrators and videographers. At the helm are Ryan, Daniel OG and Omelet (a nickname given because of his head, which is apparently egg-shaped). Their tastes include Slipknot, trip-hop, R&B and rap, but their sound is always playful and raw; a reflection of their friendships and the scrappy backdrop of their home studio.
“Everything is in-house. We do all our own designs for merchandise,” says Omelet. “Making the best out of – not a crappy situation – but not the best. We haven’t got access to big studios or an engineer who mixes it all. We all had to learn. None of us went to music school or anything.”
Their arrival is part of a fresh way of thinking; the self-sufficient, positive mindset of Generation Z, who we are often told are doomed. In spite of the circumstances, they are determined to create, says Ryan. “We’re young, and our fans might be a bit younger. So we’ve gone through what they’re going through. Nowadays, you come out of school, you’re told to go to university, but people who go to university come out with first-class degrees and they’re struggling to find jobs. Why not do something that you can enjoy for the rest of your life? It’s letting people know you can do whatever you want. You can be smart. Don’t be stupid.” Harriet Gibsone
Anenon
Brian Allen Simon is the producer, multi-instrumentalist and founder of the Non Projects record label, whose releases lurk in the uncategorisable, avant-garde section of the record store. The musician, who specialises in sax, makes songs that weave together classic experimental traits and sharp cultural trends – wiry electronics, jazz, improvisation, cinematic string sections and spooky ambient sonics. His clean, cathartic 2016 album Petrol was released this year by Friends of Friends Music, a creative hub for forward-thinking Los Angeles artists. HG
Bad Breeding
A solitary bleak tower block is featured on Bad Breeding’s SoundCloud page; a nod to the council estates of Stevenage from where the punk group hail. There is a sense of commuter-belt boredom and frustrated fury tugging its way through each of their spiky songs, too. The less said about them the better, however: they claim to be keen to avoid “the viral litter and meretricious trends that develop online, which only go to showcase the kind of cultural zero we’ve reached as a society”. HG
Beatrice Dillon
The supreme British exponent of the idea that dance music can grab you by the hips and frontal lobe simultaneously, Beatrice Dillon is a producer, DJ and ethnomusicologist with a global purview of funk. DJ sets feature African chants rubbing against dub techno to create time-expanding, grin-stretching polyrhythms; her own tracks are minimal techno without the bad drugs and even worse jeans, as crisp and fresh as a melon medley. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Belly Squad
Unlike Section Boyz’s glossy rap, tailored to a US market, the rap, grime and afrobeats crew Belly Squad, from east and south London, keep their feet grounded on British soil. Genre-hopping and always full of adolescent energy, their tunes are packed with melody and mischief – Banana being the epitome of their infectious, albeit overtly phallic-focussed, choruses. HG
Berhana
The soulful suburban eeriness of Frank Ocean’s Super Rich Kids floats through this pastel-hued R&B singer/rapper’s self-titled EP. Already ordained as the next great thing by online arbiters of quality, the Atlantan of Ethiopian heritage has a Hype Machine No 1 hit on his hands with the slacker soul ballad Janet, and has a handful of other lost, lonely grooves dedicated to self-discovery and twentysomething existentialism. HG
Big Thief
A surprise indie success story, these virtual unknowns were snapped up by Saddle Creek this year. Fans of barbed balladry in the vein of Angel Olsen and Sharon van Etten should enjoy Masterpiece, an album rich with singer Adrianne Lenker’s sorrowful, stewed-in storytelling. The Brooklyn group have been out on the road in the US with Kevin Morby, Eleanor Friedberger, M Ward and more. They have new fans in Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and were named NPR readers’ No 1 new band of 2016. HG
Brooke Sharkey
Not yet 30, Brooke Sharkey already has more than a decade’s worth of performing across the UK and Europe under her belt and a very accomplished second album in Wandering Heart. File her under folk if you have to, but her distinctive sound and strong narrative skills bring to mind Regina Spektor, French chanteuses such as Juliette Greco (her own French upbringing means she sings in both languages) or even Tom Waits – a live highlight is her stripped-back version of The Briar and the Rose. The sparse fragility of Sharkey’s music and her intimate delivery mean that it gives up its charms slowly, but very surely. Imogen Tilden
Cabbage
The stench of Fat White Family’s squat rock still lingers in the air, but the aptly named Cabbage, from Mossley in Manchester, are up for ousting their place as Britain’s premiere scuzzy stars. Decked out in camo and fans of GG Allin – AKA the Charles Manson of rock – their mission is to launch an “idiosyncratic, satirical attack in the form of discordant neo post-punk”. HG
Compton White
His moniker might conjure images of an all-American country showman, but Compton White is really Lloyd Whittle, a producer who grew up between London and the Isle of Wight. He makes cockney pirate radio interludes and tracks with titles such as Hounslow, and his self-titled debut EP was a masterclass in anything-goes electronica: flitting between hyperactive sampledelica and beautifully unsettling dissonance in the vein of Arca. And like all the most captivating dance-music makers, Whittle is also a master of nostalgia, evoking the elusive transcendence of the clubbing experience. Rachel Aroesti
Delroy Edwards
Sure, it might be easy to be independent if your dad is Hollywood character-actor legend Ron Perlman, but while most privileged Los Angelenos give themselves over to EDM and DUIs, Delroy Edwards takes the road less travelled. His early work was ferociously analogue techno, modulating into prettily jacking – and still ferociously analogue – house. His new album, Hangin’ at the Beach, meanwhile, is a series of miniatures, where no-fi coldwave gets obscured under a smear of sewer gunge. He has a great label, too, in LA Club Resource. BBT
Dexta Daps
Dexta Daps grew up listening to dancehall heavyweights such as Shabba Ranks, Bounty Killa and Elephant Man. Now his own music is inescapable in Jamaica. So much so that when MIA visited the Caribbean island recently, she was so profoundly drawn to his sound that she enlisted the golden boy of dancehall for her album, Aim. With the genre infiltrating so much modern pop, now has never been a better time for Daps to evolve into a global star. HG
Elf Kid
Grime’s renaissance doesn’t look like abating any time soon; still in his teens, Elf Kid hails from south London and, alongside Novelist, is part of the Square crew. His track Golden Boy is already one of the anthems of 2016, a frenetic blur of boasts pasted on to a speeded-up sample from Amerie’s 1 Thing. “I want a Mobo, Oscars after that,” is among the masterplans he rattles off, and as long as he is travelling at this pace, who would dare try to stop him? TJ
Elysia Crampton
Elysia Crampton is one of a hyper-cosmopolitan new wave of artists who address the interconnection – and also, paradoxically, the rootlessness – of digital culture. A trans Bolivian-American woman, her album American Drift considered the shared pigmentation of skin and soil; her new one, Demon City, is told from the perspective of the severed limbs of an 18th-century Bolivian revolutionary. The high concepts are tethered with beautiful music that blends Latin pop rhythms such as huancayo with ambient synths and rap-production bombast. BBT
Eat Fast
Fuzz, noise, garage and grunge; the Newcastle four-piece formerly known as Eat (they changed names after an 80s alt-rock group going by the same name threatened legal action) put out their debut EP on their own label earlier this year. Since then, both 6 Music and Radio 1 have given them many spins – which isn’t bad for a band who recorded the vocals and guitars in their bedrooms and the drums in one of their dad’s kitchens. Eat that, Eat. HG
Estrons
This rising Welsh rock band’s lead single is a baptism of fury: I’m Not Your Girl was written by singer Tali Källström after overhearing two men bragging about women they had slept with – it quivvers with a collision of testosterone, fear and, as the frontwoman herself says, “that cesspool of crap surrounding teenage emotions that still exist in your 20s and 30s”. They have toured with fellow febrile punk newcomers Slaves and Dilly Dally, and their debut EP, She’s Here Now, is out this month. HG
Etta Bond
A skinhead soul princess living in London, Etta Bond has managed to swerve the industry shackles often imposed on young female singers. Discovered online and starting out as a guest vocalist on a Wretch 32 track in 2011, she has gone on to release a string of EPs and singles, and along with sometime collaborator Chris Loco, has been left alone to make lurching late-night R&B, empowering neo-soul and bonkers club pop aimed at rousing a Bacardi Breezer-fuelled riot. HG
Forth Wanderers
Forth Wanderers’ frontwoman Ava Trilling is just 18 – impressively, she has already nailed the tough but irresistibly melancholy vocal style that makes this New Jersey outfit such an alluring proposition. The band make slow-burn indie that recalls the gorgeous haze of Mazzy Star through the prism of lo-fi DIY punk – and despite having recently signed to two labels (Marathon in the UK and Father/Daughter in the US), the group hold the principles of the latter very close to their heart. RA
Francis and the Lights
The biggest pop stars out there are also the best talent-spotters: namely, Kanye West and Drake. Californian musician Francis Farewell Starlite has worked with both, but he is not the sort of scrappy trap pretender they tend to pull up. Instead the California musician makes minimal, plaintive pop not dissimilar to zeitgeisty French outfit Christine and the Queens. See his recent collaboration with Kanye and Bon Iver, Friends, for proof of his glitchy and effortlessly spine-tingling charms. RA
Gaika
This Brixton-born artist’s music lurks at the murkier end of some of the most exciting genres of the moment, from grime to trip-hop to dancehall. Gaika recently released an EP called Spaghetto on Warp that combined the distinctive rhythms of the latter with a darkly industrial aesthetic to brilliantly unsettling ends. Previously a member of rowdy Manchester rap crew Murkage, Gaika now aims to subvert black masculinity with his performance art-style videos and studiously disruptive beats. RA
Galcher Lustwerk
When he appeared with his mixtape 100% Galcher in 2013, Galcher Lustwerk became an instant obsession in underground dance circles. Just as “deep house” was becoming a catch-all signifier for bland minor chords to have on in the background while you gazed soulfully at an Ibiza sunset, here was someone reinventing it as sexily laser-focused rap music. Remixes and side projects since have only been diverting, but his DJ sets are sublime and he has the potential for a truly mindblowing second album. BBT
Ill
Manchester group Ill believe “in the power of disobedient noise”. Formed in 2012 and self-releasing their grotty, wild, weird and frenzied music, they started life with ambitions to sound like the Fall or Can, but instead bulldozed towards female-fronted post-punk along the lines of LiLiPUT and Kleenex. Self-described “evil pop” makers, the riot grrrl aesthetic lives on in their music – fiercely political and with a penchant for waggling dildos on stage and in videos. HG
Jamie Isaac
Part of the DIY south London community spearheaded by King Krule, 22-year-old Jamie Isaac is from Croydon. His intimate debut album Couch Baby sounds like misty-eyed Chet Baker burbling from the speakers of a laptop in a dark, stuffy bedroom. Although a former Brit school graduate, he prefers low-key lounge jazz to zealous jazz hands and very much exists within modern pop “sad lad” scene. HG
Kablam
DJ and producer Kablam – Kajsa Blom – was born by the Swedish west coast and relocated to Berlin in 2012. Her music is a brutalist concoction of the sledgehammer and the spiritual. A former DJ and resident of Berlin’s famous Janus party, she was named by Mixmag and Fader as one of the most essential artists of 2016. For her avant-garde club music she makes an unrelenting mix of sounds and textures, that, if it weren’t so radical and imaginative, would be nothing but a racket. HG
Kadhja Bonet
LA songwriter Kadhja Bonet clearly has reservations about belonging in the modern era – her smooth soul voice and flute-adorned productions place her more firmly in the 70s, alongside the likes of Minnie Riperton or, during folkier moments, Vashti Bunyan. Intimacy is key here: Bonet’s voice is delicate and pure, yet she has enough confidence to place it high up in the mix. And it’s the classically trained musician who makes this call – she took on writing, arranging and production duties for her thoroughly DIY debut mini-album The Visitor. She also performed most of the instruments, too, just in case you were worried she might be slacking. TJ
Kelsey Lu
A modern-day flower child and free thinker from Charlotte, North Carolina, Kelsey Lu is a classically trained instrumentalist whose style is so sophisticated she turns something otherwise irksome into an elegant artform: take playing a loop pedal, or her video for Dreams, in which she pirouettes in a desert while wearing leather chaps. She has recently collaborated with Blood Orange and Kelela, supported Grimes and Florence and the Machine, and she counters spiritual, celestial classical-crossover soundscapes with pertinent political messages. HG
Kodie Shane
At the risk of isolating the uninitiated/anyone over the age of 15, rapper Kodie Shane is one part of Lil Yachty’s Sailing Team. Which essentially means she is part of the new school of colourful, cartoonish rap. Fetty Wap’s Trap Queen has a lot to answer for: the Atlanta-born artist’s music is a weird amalgam of peppy pop sounds, Auto-Tuned vocals and limitless energy. HG
Lil Yachty
Splice Drake’s melodious mextrosexual rap with the new school of sing-song Atlantan hip-hop and garnish with the kind of post-ironic irreverence that marks out a new generation of fiercely modern musicians, and 19-year-old Miles Parks McCollum’s arch and gloriously inane sound is what you get. Lil Yachty’s debut mixtape, Lil Boat, was both gratifyingly poppy and deeply weird and, like any respectable future-facing pop star, he has got the visuals to go with it: the brilliantly bizarre video to 1 Night features kittens, badly Photoshopped memes and Disney singalong lyrics. RA
Mitski
Mitski Miyawaki’s Your Best American Girl, from her album Puberty 2, is a brilliant dissection of feeling “half-Japanese, half-American but not fully either”. It is also a deconstruction of an alt-rock scene inhabited mostly by white males. Its video features Mitski violently, passionately kissing her own hand. A perfect balance of silliness and seriousness – just what the lo-fi guitar star and queen of self-inspection does best. HG
Moses Sumney
The experimental guitar textures that form the backdrop of Moses Sumney’s self-released EP Lamentations might place him firmly leftfield. Yet the fractured, underwatery sound has been incorporated into mainstream releases this year, on everything from Frank Ocean’s Blonde to Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool (whose title describes Sumney’s sound pretty well). Not that Sumney is guitar-fixated – there are inventive vocal arrangements and a big enough dose of sadboy electronica here to sate the appetite of James Blake fans. HG
Nadia Rose
There’s making a statement, then there’s Nadia Rose’s Skowd. The 22-year-old Croydon rapper’s recent music video – more than 1m views – features her and her squad storming down a street with the sort of confidence and bravado that would terrify Taylor Swift and the Victoria’s Secret model troupe. Not your average ode to friendship, it is a celebration rather than schmaltz, brimming with humour and charisma – a new Missy Elliott in the making. HG
Noname
Chance the Rapper featured the skills of Chicago’s Fatimah Warner on his 2013 breakthrough mixtape, Acid Rap. Now under the spotlight as the solo star Noname, her melodic, woozy rap often sounds as if it is recorded on a mangled cassette tape. Her mixtape Telefone is full of breezy, glistening synths, like a surreal soundtrack to a chintzy 80s American sitcom. HG
Obongjayar
Who would have ever guessed that Norwich would have so much to say about the sound of 2016? First Let’s Eat Grandma emerged with their twisted fairytale pop, and now there’s Obonjayar, whose sonic journey has absorbed influences from his birthplace of Nigeria as well as the Norfolk city he called home for a while. He currently lives in London, although from the likes of Creeping – which, with its dank claustrophobia, is reminiscent of Roots Manuva – he positions himself squarely as an outsider in the capital. TJ
Oliver Coates
Also known as “Radiohead’s secret weapon”, indie cellist Oliver Coates has a CV full of admirable feats: a Massive Attack collaborator who has tweaked Squarepusher and Boards of Canada songs, he is a classical crossover artist who goes way beyond Clean Bandit’s approach of pairing sugary pop with strings. Aside from the release of the album Up Stepping and programming a weekend of “deep minimalism” at the Southbank Centre, his work for Radiohead formed the basis of tracks on A Moon Shaped Pool. HG
Pinegrove
Fans of early Wilco, Built to Spill and Bright Eyes should enjoy New Jersey four-piece Pinegrove. Creating country-tinged indie rock (with subtle emo undertones, if subtle emo is at all possible), their buzz is as slow building and steady as their sound: based on word-of-mouth in the US, their album Cardinal shifted more than 2,000 copies in its first week before they had even been on a national tour. HG
PWR BTTM
Drummer Liv Bruce and guitarist-vocalist Ben Hopkins – the duo behind PWR BTTM – started writing music in college three years ago in New York. They paint their faces with glitter/gold/makeup/whatever – adornments that enhance their music’s buoyancy – and are part of a wave of artists taking issues of queerness and sexuality to the masses. Their aim is to not only spread joy, but “bring elements of performance and drag artistry into DIY culture” – a scene that has been predominantly straight and serious until now. HG
Ray BLK
New York may have Jay Z and Alicia Keys’s Empire State of Mind – but south London’s got My Hood, a soaring celebration of Ray BLK’s home borough featuring socks and sliders, full English breakfasts, fried chicken, mopeds and a cameo from Stormzy. On 5050, meanwhile, she samples the Cardigans’ Lovefool, but wrings frustration and fury from its cutesy, keening lyrics. You get the impression she won’t take no for an answer. HG
Ricky Eat Acid
Cult Baltimore producer Sam Ray is a prolific artist who works under multiple names. He has played in a folk band (Julia Brown) as well as an indie rock band (Teen Suicide) but his current moniker, Ricky Eat Acid, reaches giddy sugar highs; all the warmth and artistry of the Avalanches, the intricacy and sophistication of instrumental hip-hop and, at its most intense, the synth surges of EDM. Some songs also come with arrangements from composer Owen Pallett. HG
Sarasara
Not only does Sarasara share a record label with Björk, as well as an alien, future-facing aesthetic, but this French producer-singer has a passion for wiring tech into her tunes, too. A coder whose former occupation was a project manager for an apps company, her music is robotic: pitting African instruments against squelching, mutant machine beats. Her debut, Amorfati, also features co-production from the official authority on oddball creations, Matthew Herbert. HG
Sex Swing
Londoners Sex Swing are an underground supergroup including members who have lived through a plane crash and a lighting bolt. Their talents stretch beyond mere survival however: the space/kraut/noise/psych rock group churn out grinding, gnarly sounds spliced with the almighty squall of a saxophone. Beware their artwork for Karnak: it will have you retching quicker than you can say Traveling Wilburys. HG
Sheer Mag
Sheer Mag do not sound like your idea of what a DIY band should sound like – instead of shouting over atonal noise, you can hear big chunks of Lynyrd Skynryd and Thin Lizzy dropped into the middle of their sound. They are resolutely unafraid of what are usually referred to by rock critics as “duelling guitars”, but underground is what they are. They put their music out on Bandcamp, with 7in singles emerging on tiny independent labels, and their songs don’t deal with boozin’ it up in honky tonks, but with the problems caused by gentrification. Punk as hell, but something you can hold lighters aloft to as well. MH
Sona Jobarteh
Kora virtuosity has, for centuries, been a male preserve, an ancient tradition handed down from father to son exclusively in griot families. Sona Jobarteh boldly and brilliantly goes where many of her male relatives and ancestors have gone before and is making an international name for herself as a virtuosic player of the 21-stringed west African harp. She is an accomplished composer and a graceful and passionate singer whose debut, Fasiya, mixes her African heritage with European sounds and strong and rousing lyrics to create immediately accessible music of charm and grace. IT
Steven Julien
Formerly operating under the alias FunkinEven, electronic pioneer Steven Julien outed his new guise for the release of his 2016 album Fallen. Julien continues to shape and inspire the underbelly of the music world, whether he is working with Róisín Murphy, sewing the splendour of his wonky funk in the Royal Opera House or in disused prison cells in Bristol. Flecks of thumping techno, Chicago house and old school hip-hop reverberate throughout his skittish soundscapes. HG
Tayla
Birmingham newcomer Tayla’s debut single Call Me Danger is a 90s R&B ode to self-celebration. Or, according to the woman herself, “going out, having your look on point, feeling killer sexy and having the attitude to back it up”. The 23-year-old one-woman TLC recently performed her debut show at London’s cult queer club night Sink the Pink in front of 3,000 club kids dressed as mermaids. Fame only gets more bizarre from here. HG
Tunji Ige
Tunji Ige was at university when he joined the Brain Bandit collective and recorded his debut The Love Project from his dormitory. The self-produced rapper-singer from Philadelphia has since scaled starrier heights; as well as being a Soundcloud smash, with tracks reaching 3m plays, he has also cameoed on Christine and the Queens’ 2015 song No Harm Is Done. A potential successor to Drake or Kanye’s throne, he is, in his own words, “post-backpack, post-swag rap, the end of trap, and it’s not wack”. HG
Venom Prison
Venom Prison’s debut album, Animus, arrived in October, and the one thing you could be sure of was that it was not aimed at crossover success: the outer edges of metal and hardcore combine brutally, and with extreme precision. It’s not really a surprise that the adjectives used to describe them include “hellish”, “violent” and “horrific”, all used approvingly. What is surprising is that their singer is a woman, Larissa Stupar. You would, genuinely, never guess it from her terrifying roar. MH
Abra – Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian. Hair & makeup: Maria Asadi using MAC Cosmetics
Jorja Smith – Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian. Makeup: Carol Lopez Reid. Stylist: Connor Williams
Neverland Clan – Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian
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