Twelve of the most exciting new artists including @WAR, Brat Star, Bby Kell, Soraya Cinema, RIP Magic, and more.
October 29, 2026
BY Pigeons, Will Schube, Neel Shah, Thomas Schreckinger, Alex Gardner, Jacob Moore, Alex Siber, Millan Verma, Sofiarose Mineghino
We've been publishing some form of Best New Artists feature on Pigeons & Planes since 2013, highlighting the rising artists who we're most excited about at that moment in time. That used to take the form of a monthly list with 10-15 names and couple of lines of text, but times have changed.
These days, you're served infinitely updated playlists of new songs by DSP algorithms or scrolling your social media platform of choice for a sensory overload of 15-second snippets and echo-chamber recommendations from a label’s latest paid influencer campaign.
So instead of throwing more and more in your face, we’re digging deeper on a more tightly focused group of artists. These might not be the latest viral stars but they're all artists who have music and a story that's worth sharing—whether they're just getting started or have been grinding for a while and are now hitting a new peak.
Look back at some past Best New Artists features here.
Photo by Philip Patton
Don’t bet against @WAR being the next to break out from the UK underground and find an audience in the US and beyond. Producing, rapping, singing, and directing videos, twin brothers JSANC and Glass House Tenant are behind the entire package and executing every piece at a high level. The production is what clicked with me first, smartly flipped samples of Usher, Sonder, and Yuna songs reworked into gritty beats that skate between R&B and rap, with unexpected dance switch-ups (“bigots & c*nts”) or surprise guitar solos (“pourin champagne for my lost ones”).
This is paired with the versatility to move like 2010s PartyNextDoor or 2000s Craig David at one moment, then bring the new wave rap intensity of Fimiguerrero, Tezzus, or diamond* the next. The package is completed by pop culture references popping up on each song that range from Amy Winehouse and Nirvana to Nicki Minaj and Ashanti. “She’s sending me nudes off her auntie’s iPad,” lives just a few lines before pouring champagne out for lost friends. @WAR always keeps you on your toes.
The visual language they’re building around the music is equally compelling. It feels as if there’s so much more lore and a vast world of @WAR that is yet to be unveiled, as they drip-feed us with each grainy filtered photo and nostalgia-tinged video. We’re locked in.—Alex Gardner
Photo courtesy of @measaninsta
There's not a whole lot we really know about Me As A Girl, and that's probably by design.
What we know is that Me As A Girl’s latest single "I Don't Know Why I Said That" stars SNL's Veronika Slowikowska as the frontwoman, and she seems to be embracing her role as an ascendant pop star.
But there are questions. Before this single, there was another Me As A Girl EP with features from Helena Gao and Sophie Cates, and some fans have theories about what’s really going on here. We’ll leave that kind of speculation to Reddit.
What we also know for sure is that "I Don't Know Why I Said That" is a great song. It’s pure pop indulgence—or indie pop, or whatever you want to call it—but it’s that distinctive strain of pop that strikes a bittersweet chord à la “Everything Is Embarrassing” or “Losing You.” It’s got all the catchiness and immediacy of a radio hit, but there's an upbeat melancholy to it, plus a key change that scratches a very specific itch. The combination makes it way more interesting than your run-of-the-mill pop smash, and incredibly addictive. Is a super producer the mastermind behind all of this? Is Veronika actually singing this song? Will there be a rotating cast of lead singers? Can Patti Harrison be next?
Only time will tell, but if Me As A Girl keeps making songs this good, I’m okay with not knowing.—Jacob Moore
Photo by Pedro Summer
I first heard Soraya Cinema through the infectious track “Creepy," a bittersweet, unique ode to love and longing to be understood. The seemingly central figure of his world (a slightly eerie but playful, monkey-masked character) had me fascinated from the get-go. In the artwork for “Creepy," he’s sitting alone on a train, lonely yet content to occupy this surreal liminal space. It’s what I like about his music: there’s a sadness that’s not overly serious. He’ll be singing about isolation or addiction while the sounds themselves approach euphoria. Like the monkey, it feels like a cloak, a way of hiding that’s both strange and weirdly innocent.
I’ve pieced together most of what I know (not much) about Soraya Cinema from crumbs across socials and conversations with other fans, which has become part of the fun for me…
1) It’s the artist project of Bilal Hamdi, a young French producer who taught himself to make music completely by ear. You’ll hear how instinctual it feels when you listen.
2) Grand Theft Auto is one of his biggest influences, alongside Daft Punk and SoundCloud rabbit holes. He’s said that just driving around in GTA and hearing random songs on the radio shaped his taste, and you can sense the spirit of that format in his work: anything could come on next.
3) His debut album, Incel Rhapsody, is on the way. I’m super curious to hear what this world sounds like across a full-length effort.
There isn’t really a big story laid out yet; finding out more about him has felt like part and parcel of discovering the songs themselves. “Suicide Letter” is probably the one I’d start with but “Creepy” is what made me want to keep a real eye out.—howard.wav
This appeared first in the P&P newsletter. Subscribe here so you don’t miss out on exclusive premieres, secret interviews, artist recommendations, and other surprises. Pigeon Mail. Delivered weekly.
Photo by Tommy Pointer
When he isn’t playing in MIKE’s Band of the Century alongside artists like Mark William Lewis, Liv.e, and duendita, Danish multi-instrumentalist Jespfur is painting ghostly landscapes with his compositions.
Iftangible, his latest full-length, was released via 10k Global, recorded in a state of constant movement after a displacement left him in a nomadic period of his life. He recorded the project in DIY sessions across the world, from LA to Amsterdam to his native village of Stiphout.
The music on Iftangible reflects that restlessness, reaching for something to hold on to. Spectral vocals seem to emerge from somewhere beyond, while Jespfur’s probing guitar lines search for slivers of warm light through dense thickets of instrumentation. On “cleaners from Rockbottom,” the riffs are wiry and nimble; on “sniper,” they become muscular and propulsive, as if drilling toward the earth’s core.
Though the album takes its time wandering through bombed-out soundscapes, that slow drift leads us into fresh sonic corners. Some of Iftangible’s stylistic touchstones may feel familiar—a dash of Mk.Gee, a pinch of King Krule—but the album is singular and transportive at its core, carrying us into half-remembered dreams of fog-covered mountains and smoke-filled rooms. Otherworldly and deeply human, it’s music that makes a home of the search itself.—Neel Shah
Photo by Norman Wong
Brat Star spent nearly a decade moving between fashion and underground club culture before emerging as a singer-songwriter. Originally from Montreal, she relocated to Berlin in 2016 to pursue fashion, eventually finding herself immersed in the city's experimental music scene, DJ’ing across genres and touring alongside Spanish rapper Yung Beef. Her music today carries traces of those different worlds.
Working closely with Canadian producer Loukeman among other collaborators, Brat Star has developed an approach to songwriting built around conversational lyricism, passing observations, and cultural references that don't always seem connected on first listen. Across her newly released debut album Southern Ontario Gothic, tracks like “Margot Tenenbaum,” “Italics,” and “Rob Ford” bring together melodic songwriting with a stream-of-consciousness approach to storytelling. Her lyrics can sound detached in their delivery but remain strangely intimate, capturing the way sincerity and irony have become increasingly difficult to separate.
Her relationship with fashion has continued to develop alongside her songwriting. For Paloma Wool's Spring/Summer 2027 collection, debuted in October 2026, Brat Star walked the runway as “Margot Tenenbaum” opened the show, with lyrics from the song engraved onto handbags and shoes. It's a fitting extension of an artist whose creative identity has never been limited to one medium. —Sofiarose Mineghino
Photo by GB
If you want to make really experimental music a few things might be useful: You should ideally be from Denmark, and if you can’t swing that, at the very least you should study at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. The school inspired The Guardian to ask in 2025, “Why is one Danish school producing nearly every cool alt-pop star?” Its graduates include Erika de Casier, ML Buch, and Henriette Motzfeldt of Smerz, among many others.
While categorizing GB—Gustav Berntsen—as “alt-pop” is a stretch bordering on factually inaccurate, the Danish songwriter has become the most recent graduate from the RMC to emerge as a shape-shifting tour de force.
Gustav’s first LP for AD 93, GB, is one of the best records of the year, a meticulous and edgy examination of the various strains of indie rock that have come and gone over the past decades. Opener “Adrenaline” chugs along with the krautrock shuffle of bands like Can, while “The Next Day” boasts the syncopated guitar battles of post-punk groups like Feelies with the sweet harmonies of the mid-2000s folk revival.
With all these influences, though, Berntsen never really sounds like anything else out right now. These touchstones are signifiers only, a way to approximate the well from which GB was drawn. All it took to convince me GB is a work of enduring excellence was one listen to “Shit River,” a seven minute post-rock dedication to the truly horrifying and brilliant mundanities that encompass being alive. What else can we really ask of our music?—Will Schube
Photo by ANTI
While Bby Kell’s influences include Tame Impala, Bjӧrk, and indie sleaze, her non-chalant, machine gun-like flows immediately reveal where the heart of her music lies: in East Atlanta. Think of Young Nudy’s effortless swing with a feminine glow or Glokk40Spaz’s bass-boosted shouts in search of an afterparty instead of a drill. Since emerging in 2025 with her debut EP, Bby Kell—who was doing the nails of Sk8star and Pradabagshawty before making music herself—has been a nice reprieve from the air of self-seriousness that clouds underground rap. Like she said in our recent interview with her, she makes music that makes people “feel happy, turn up, and play it over and over again.” Mission accomplished.—Millan Verma
Photo by Sal Redpath
RIP Magic band members Felix Bayley-Higgins and Marco Pini met on their first day of sixth form, went to art school together, and have been making things side by side for about ten years. They decided to start a musical group and wanted to treat it like a conceptual art project, considering how the medium could serve their artistic vision. They found other people on the same exact wavelength: filmmaker Pedro Takahashi and photographer Beth Boswell-Knight. Together, the group expanded the songs that Felix and Marco wrote in the seaside town of Hastings, England during a week of rehearsals.
By the time RIP Magic had their first show, they “came off stage like, wtf, we’re a band,” the group tells P&P. None of them are trained musicians, so they make music more intuitively. Tyler, The Creator heard them playing their demos while DJing, and James Murphy ended up producing “5words,” a song they made in a one-hour burst of creativity. “We didn’t really know what we were doing, so maybe he liked that immediacy,” they share.
That rawness and ingenuity is evident throughout their debut album 1,2,3, out October 30 via section1. The project is an electronic rock record with no guitars, incorporating elements of dub, dance music, hip-hop, and pop. The group is set to play their first-ever US headline shows in New York on November 12 and Los Angeles on November 18. If you’re in the area, you are going to want to see them live.—Thomas Schreckinger
Photo by Johanna Hvidtved
Yangze is the alias of Danish producer and composer Jakob Littauer, one-third of the experimental group TLF Trio. At just 16, Littauer became one of the youngest artists to play Berghain, performing there as part of Electrojuice. His ultra-cool electronic pop sounds like an android discovering its humanity, with every disparate piece clicking perfectly into place.
His metallic percussion is a well-oiled machine imbued with a living, breathing pulse. Warm synth beds and acoustic guitar soften its edges, while an ultra-filtered falsetto threads through it all, functioning as an instrument in its own right. Yangze’s debut album, Heartbreak Stew, is out November 13 via influential Copenhagen label Escho, home to artists like Fine, Smerz, Astrid Sonne, and Elias Rønnenfelt.
Standout singles “Stew” and “Okay” seem in constant motion, shifting subtly to scratch itches you didn’t realize you had. “Fuck No” and “Heart-shaped Eyes” show Yangze’s ability to create indelible moods. The result is music that feels meticulously assembled and startlingly alive, a cyborg-like mixing of sounds executed by a true craftsman.—Neel Shah
Photo by Noah Kentis
Junior Mesa, the Bakersfield-raised progenitor of what he calls “Soul-Two-Point-O,” has been on a tear since his 2025 single “good time,” a nu-disco romp with an underbelly of intrusive thoughts. In August, we premiered his best work yet: “the cops are coming.” It’s an alt-pop slingshot that pinpoints the bull’s-eye between euphoria and panic, like revolutionary lovers evading the detection of Anduril watchtowers.
A self-taught singer and multi-instrumentalist inspired by the boundlessness of Prince, D’Angelo, and MJ, Junior is just as deft at drumless, disarming ballads like “will i love again.” They render loneliness so viscerally, you risk contagion by listening. Not too many artists can reimagine a ‘60s classic immortalized by Nina Simone and nail it, but he pulls that off too on “Who Knows Where The Time Goes.”
Junior himself has metamorphosed in public since 2019. He’s already weathered a signed-and-dismissed industry hype cycle that left him stuck in a perilous hiatus. To his credit, he’s refused to cover his tracks or feign a fresh origin story, instead preserving earlier musical eras as building blocks toward the electrifying art he’s releasing now. Working in lockstep with creative partner Noah Kentis, an underground favorite for uncanny short films, Mesa has found his footing. We’re at the edge of our seat for his next conjuring.— Alex Siber
Photo by BEASTIE
Stuck in Mitcham, South London during the pandemic, the artist known as BEASTIE found a new appreciation for the place where he grew up. The singer-songwriter-producer looked inwards at what had shaped him and built songs inspired by those experiences, songs which defy genre and will connect with the outsiders and the dreamers.
“I wanted to make something that encapsulated the chaos and beauty of the place I call home,” he explains of his new EP maria. “To let people see Mitcham through my lens, to feel all the moments, questions and emotions that moulded who I am. Looking back and seeing yourself through the fog. That is maria.”
As a younger listener, BEASTIE resonated with artists like Blood Orange and Frank Ocean while the sounds of UK rap and drill were all around him. Today, his music is rooted in singer-songwriter traditions, although the gentle touch of acoustic guitars and bedroom pop sometimes giving way to rapped verses and glitchy electronics, most notably in the stunningly unclassifiable sonic collage of “does it still rain?.”
Another highlight is “mitcham mint,” a touching tribute to his hometown that was my first encounter with BEASTIE, served up by the algorithmic powers that be during a YouTube-digging session. Start there and then enjoy the rest of the maria EP.—Alex Gardner
Photo by Jason Al-Taan
Mackeeper, the brother duo of Miles Cohen and Nick Harwood, grew up together in the DMV, but they’re quite distinct. Miles, the younger of the two, was the self-described “loner kid” who played the drums in other people’s bands, from a punk group in middle school to a church outfit in high school. After teaching himself guitar and production, he’d lock himself in his room writing songs and dreaming of being a frontman one day.
Nick was the “knuckleheaded, rebellious” one who had to forge his own path, eventually becoming a music video director, which he still is. One day, they had the brilliant idea to start making music as a duo. “It seems like more people than ever are struggling, but no one makes struggle music,” Nick tells P&P. “We wanna make real music for real people, not mood music for playlists.”
The brothers have shared a whirlwind year together, with no signs of slowing down any time soon. Mackeeper has opened for Blood Orange, Porches, and Deb Never, and their sets have been filled with music nobody had heard yet. Dev Hynes has been a huge supporter from day one. “He’s so supportive because he believes in us, and obviously it’s the most flattering thing on earth,” Nick tells us.
In October, Mackeeper released their debut album, Believe You Me. They imagine the title working like an incantation: say it out loud, then hold yourself to it. They emphasize the importance of lyrics rolling off the tongue, making you feel cool when you sing their songs. In their words, “We want you to rep these songs and wear them like t-shirts.” The record restlessly moves between pop, rock, folk, breakbeats, live guitar, and hip-hop swagger borrowed from the likes of OutKast. It’s never boring, always in search of the next idea.—Thomas Schreckinger