Thirteen of the most exciting new artists including Amil Raja, Judah Weston & IsoKeys, earthsignchels, girlsweetvoiced, and more.
August 13, 2026
BY Pigeons, Will Schube, Neel Shah, Thomas Schreckinger, Alex Gardner, Jacob Moore, Alex Siber, Millan Verma, Katie Clayton, Eric Skelton
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 Renae Wootson
How do we mourn those we lost? The people that are in our lives one day, then inexplicably, tragically, gone? The world moves on mundanely, asking us to keep floating along in our normal routine. If we don’t, we get left behind. How does anyone do this? It’s a question that will plague each and every one of us at some point in our lives. It’s what makes us human. It’s also what has made earthsignchels’ breakthrough single, “Daddy Died,” resonate as much as it has. Everyone hears something they can relate to in the song.
The Chicago-born chels brings a melodic delivery to her music that recalls early Nicki Minaj, while her flow on “Daddy Died” possesses the same blunt directness that’s made Remble into a regional California superstar. She’s got the self-awareness of a great satirist and the passion of an Oscar-winning dramatist.
earthsignchels’ charisma is one of one, as evidenced in her COLORS performance video for “Daddy Died,” which gives the song’s technicolor nightmare aesthetics an even more unforgettable tinge (check it out below). Early singles and EPs like “Already Won” and EQUINOX hint at this power, but “Daddy Died” promises the start of something new; something special.
chels uses the prompt of her father’s death to jump in a million different directions, each line an impact statement on how her world has lost its meaning in the wake of the tragedy. It’s effortlessly powerful, and each line deserves an extensive study in its own right. “Every part of me's been burned, I'm just the ashes,” she raps towards the end of the song. Whether she’s just the remnants or a phoenix beginning to make a return, we’re eager for whatever’s next. For now, earthsignchels is in the studio working on new music.—Will Schube
Photo by Cian Moore
Eighteen-year-old Judah Weston and his older brother IsoKeys have spent the past few months turning social media into their own personal megaphone, blasting our feeds with viral snippets showcasing Judah’s bold-mouthed brand of unmistakably New York rap over Iso’s endlessly danceable beats. Their constant posting has paid off too, earning co-signs from A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, Veeze, Wiki, Sleepy Hallow, and Tay Keith.
The pair’s debut album, Why So Much Hate, is one of the most lively rap releases of the year. Chronicling their come-up in real time, the record is packed with personality—instantly quotable bars and hooks that linger for days. The backbone of the project, though, is something less immediate.
Growing up between the Lower East Side and Brooklyn, Judah jumped on Iso’s beats at age 12 after a traumatic experience. They’ve been making music in various forms since, including a stint in 202 Collective, a group that also helped launch fellow New York native Liim. IsoKeys’ production serves as the steady engine for Judah’s hyperactive delivery, as the former blends slinking synths with bubbling drum patterns inspired by Timbaland and Missy Elliott.
Judah graduated high school this May, and he still acts like the class clown who’s impossible to root against. He’s boisterous but never a bully, and underneath his larger-than-life personality lies a vulnerability rare in most rappers his age. The story the brothers told us about how the pair recorded “Thug” encapsulates this dichotomy perfectly: According to Judah, he wrote the verse while taking a shit—crying on the toilet after hearing the news of Renée Good’s killing at the hands of ICE. Judah explains about his writing style, “I just rap only for the reason to get the thoughts out of my brain because my brain moves really, really fast.”
In a social media landscape that can often feel forced, impersonal, and fake, Judah and Iso are the opposite; and yet, it’s clear they’re having more fun than the rest of us.—Neel Shah
Photo by Daniel Dukane
There’s something very Tumblr-esque about the way girlsweetvoiced showed up. It was just her, a laptop camera, what looked like her bedroom. She also came carrying brand new songs nobody had heard. Somehow, her videos landed with Frank Ocean, SZA, Clairo, Doechii, and even Joni Mitchell. That last connection came after girlsweetvoiced sampled Mitchell’s “California” on her standout track “Tonight,” and, before anything else, mailed her a letter to ask permission. Mitchell agreed.
girlsweetvoiced was born Adriana Mallya and brought up in Ottawa. She pulled her stage name from Sappho, the ancient Greek poet, whose surviving lines include the phrase “girl sweetvoiced.” Sappho wrote in near-constant yearning, and so does girlsweetvoiced.
Mallya crafts her music alongside Michael Uzowuru and Mike Furlong, the former known as a key collaborator of SZA, Frank Ocean, and Rosalía. girlsweetvoiced pieces songs together out of spare, mostly home-built elements, quick MIDI sketches, a handful of chords, and a voice that sounds like a secret coming to life.
Her taste and singular voice run through her debut, Lovesweet, which she released earlier this summer via RCA Records and A24 Music. Song by song, girlsweetvoiced writes about a situationship as if she’s watching a slow-motion car crash she can’t look away from. It feels like having a FaceTime call with the artist herself as she recounts the whole story beat by beat. The tone flips fast, throughout: funny, and then suddenly bruising, sometimes within the same line. It fits. Start with “Tonight,” then dive into the rest of the debut. Tracks like “Mirror Pics,” “So Long,” and “Cranberry” make a strong case that this is an artist you’ll want to have been there for from the start.—Thomas Schreckinger
Photo by Bolade Banjo
The clues have long been there for those tapped in, the listeners with their ears to the streets. Dawuna’s been bubbling in the underground off the strength of stunning, delightfully original solo releases like 2021’s Glasslit Dream and 2024’s Naya. The first generation Baltimore-born Ugandan-American has long been circling the styles of tentpoles like D’Angelo, Prince, and modern disciples like Dijon, Q, and Foushée. His DIY, homespun compositions show the seams of his work without ever scanning as hastily made. This is music straight from the source, recorded and meticulously organized, then sent as secret transmissions to his growing legion of fans.
For those who are newer to the show, his recent signing to True Panther is pretty much all you need to know. The label’s got as strong of a hit rate as any in the game, so when they released his new mixtape, African Family Laptop Musick, at the end of July, the co-sign carried weight. The music’s even heavier.
“I was healing from a traumatic head injury that gave me a later amnesia diagnosis, so I don’t remember more than a couple small flashes of memory from the recording/construction of this project,” Dawuna explained upon its release.
Imagine being able to create something this powerful, this beautiful, this bold, and the final product is the only standing monument from the process. It’s trippy and disorienting, psychedelic; just like this music. “Pressure” is the instant stand out, an ecstatic devotion that conjures feelings of butterflies and excitement—the miracle of what good music does. More than half a decade in, Dawuna’s been at it for a while but this feels like a turning point. The start of something really, really exciting. More soon.—Will Schube
Photo by Alex D'Cruze
Ledbyher is having a heavyweight 2026. The singer/rapper/producer/filmmaker and all-around creative force is a vital female voice in the UK Underground: an amorphous scene of constantly shifting styles and boundless creativity that artists like Jim Legxacy and Fakemink have emerged from. She's forging her own path, but it feels as if Ledbyher could be on a similar trajectory as some of the scene's breakouts, releasing with impressive consistency and collaborating both within (SINN6R, 5EB) and beyond the UK Ug.
There's an emotional depth to the music Ledbyher releases, whether she’s rapping over cloud rap meets nu-wave jerk beats or singing alongside grungey guitars. Her approach is shaped by her life and experiences so far, moving between Germany and Indonesia as a child before settling in a small, rural town in the east of England. Her older sister and frequent collaborator, who makes music under the name Anjeli, encouraged her to start producing, and outlines what their upbringing was like in the town of Kings Lynn. “It’s a hard place to survive as a creative person,” she told Pigeons & Planes earlier this year, in our piece on the UK Underground. “But [our family] also used to get a lot of scrutiny. People didn't want to speak to us because my dad is Scottish and 6ft, my mum's a 4ft Southeast Asian woman. People would kind of look at us and be, like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ ‘What do we do with this?’”
Eventually moving to London after her 2021 EP CUNCH caught some buzz, Ledbyher is now signed to Island Records and released her label debut mixtape The Elephant in February of this year. It was quickly followed by singles "Dirty Rumors" (produced by Clams Casino, Tony Seltzer, and Otxhello), "Needja" (produced by Mura Masa), and "SNOW ON THE TABLE" (built around a flip of a Craig David classic). It doesn't sound as if things will slow down any time soon. The live shows are sold out, she's in the mix with the right collaborators, and she's already plotting her next project for 2027.—Alex Gardner
Photo by Adali Schell
Hyperpop and digicore caused an explosive shift in alternative music over a few short, very strange years during COVID. By the time we were all outside again, that chaotic, internet-y, hyperactive energy didn’t quite hit the same. Plus, many originators wanted nothing to do with it, and the scene splintered into subgenres, some more niche, others more commercially viable. But as they say: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed.
Clyde Crooks is not hyperpop by any stretch of the imagination, but his kinetic approach to songwriting scratches a similar itch and fills a void left behind. He carries that unpredictable spirit that we've acquired a taste for, and doesn't shy away from big, in-your-face hooks, waves of Y2K nostalgia, and emo-tinged vocal inflections. But it's way more sophisticated (doesn't punch you in the face with 57 layers of sound at once), organic (live instrumentations, no glitch overload), and mature (less likely to call you a piss baby).
Now listen, I got sick of hyperpop just like everyone else, but I have to admit that for a while afterwards, a lot of "good" music felt a little boring. I'd been overstimulated and had grown accustomed to chaos. My dopamine receptors had been numbed, and hearing Clyde Crooks' "38 Inch Love Seat" snapped me out of that funk. At around 1:21 in that song, I actually smirked because I was so relieved that I could still be surprised by music again. It's still possible, even without cartoonish vocal effects and bass that jiggles your internal organs.
Clyde Crooks is sneaky like that, and he's onto something. It might not be as in-your-face as a lot of today's buzziest noise in the post-hyperpop realm, but he's tastefully and consistently subverting pop’s expectations and quietly carving out a new path forward.
His new EP Hark is out September 18th, and his new single "Maybe Selena" is out now.—Jacob Moore
Photo by Alistair McVeigh
If Perks of Being a Wallflower was remade for Gen-Z, Amie Blu’s music would be the perfect soundtrack. The South London-born singer writes as if no one’s reading, detailing her fears and failures, mistakes and lessons hard-learned, with the mic cradled in her arms. Her melodies produce a similar effect as Daniel Caesar’s: they carry a poignant sadness, but beneath the surface lies a profound sense of hope, an unspoken acknowledgment that life is something that remains in flux.
Her 2025 album, when all is said and done, is a journey through what she calls “one of the worst years of my life.” On “if i leave,” she shudders at the idea of starting a new chapter; on “shadow,” she details losing herself in someone else’s light; on “missing everything,” she disassociates, becoming a mere observer of her own existence. Amie Blu’s songs are heart-breaking, but reprieve is always found in the beauty of their composition.
This year, Amie is riding the momentum of “trees for the woods,” which keeps gaining momentum, not to mention co-signs from artists like SZA. On the horizon, live shows with Faye Webster and Laufey.—Millan Verma
Photo by Louisa Meng
On “EX KEEP CALLIN,” ERISTHEPLANET simply declares, “Ain’t no celebrity, I just set the trend.” Big words, sure, but she has the receipts to back them up. Long before she ever called herself a rapper, ERISTHEPLANET had already found her people online, just in a totally different lane. At 14 she kicked off a beauty and lifestyle YouTube channel, right in the peak “get ready with me” era, and she built a real, devoted audience years before she ever picked up a mic. Then, her early twenties hit and she pulled the plug. Adulthood was starting to feel real, and she wanted space, not a life where every detail was content. But her habit of moving a beat faster than everyone else online never really faded; it just shifted lanes and landed somewhere new.
After her influencer era, things got messier and quieter. Random jobs, self-doubt, and all the less glamorous parts of figuring yourself out when nobody’s watching. In her Dazed interview, she puts it plainly: “I was literally killing my old self.” That same idea comes back almost word-for-word on “GEEZER,” the D.C. rapper’s breakout track, where she opens by announcing a restart over a hazy, 808-heavy beat. It didn’t stay underground for long. The track ended up as the backdrop to SZA’s Instagram posts and Drake’s livestreams.
ERIS calls her sound “internet rap,” music that pivots genres the way we jump between tabs, and lyrics that treat texts, FaceTime flirting, and doomscrolling like the emotional reality they actually are. That’s basically the blueprint for her debut mixtape, IT BE THAT DAMN PHONE.
As she tells P&P, “IT BE THAT DAMN PHONE hits on the phenomena that many of our current problems point directly to our phones, internet and devices, the same way our mothers and fathers may have told us (Gen X, Gen Z) growing up. My experience on the internet has completely shaped me as a person and I touch on that throughout this project. Celebrating a new era and new beginning coming into the world of music, and making it my own.”
Put simply, ERISTHEPLANET is enjoying herself, following her intuition, and trusting that the right girls will get it. —Thomas Schreckinger
Photo by Tom Schwimmbeck
London-based producer Amil Raja constructs an intoxicating sonic world for his city’s late-night wanderers on his project ephemera. Enveloping R&B samples in a blanket of dimly lit vape smoke, Raja slices pitched vocals, Auto-tuned whispers, and stray laughter into a bed of skittish drums and imposing synths, effortlessly evoking the wee hours of a long night out.
Raja’s sound sits at the center of Asian Paper, a collective of South Asian, UK-based diaspora artists raised on internet culture and fearless genre experimentation. Its core members include Raja and The Twins alongside creatives Jeremiah Jim and Arran Ashan, but their reach extends far further. Together, they are quietly carving out their own lived-in corner of the UK underground, playing with the striking tensions between the intimate closeness of local immigrant communities and their sprawling, hyper-connected global reach.
Equal parts online irony and nostalgic heart, ephemera––and I would argue Asian Paper as a collective—finds its visual anchor in the Arran Ashan-directed video for “ill be there for u,” capturing the exact feeling of an after-hours social media scroll to decompress from the city noise.
What makes Raja’s vision so compelling is his ability to channel a frenetic, digital-first existence into music that feels deeply personal yet totally unbounded. Rather than letting the chaos of online life overwhelm his art, he translates it into a cohesive aesthetic for a generation navigating hybrid cultural identities. As this diaspora-driven movement continues to gather momentum, ephemera stands as both a standout personal milestone and a vital blueprint for where a certain subsection of the UK underground could be heading.—Neel Shah
Photo by @mellozwrld
On June 2, Imani Imani introduced herself to the world as the first female artist on pgLang and dropped a debut album, Papercut, with no prior rollout. Poof. A fully-realized artist had arrived, seemingly out of nowhere.
As we’ve learned more of her story, however, it’s become clear that the Dutch singer and songwriter didn’t develop overnight. Quite the opposite, actually. In her first-ever interview, she revealed to P&P that she patiently honed her skills in a small Amsterdam studio for six years before ever releasing music publicly. “That's the best kind of development,” she says. “If you get the time and the resources, take that time.”
During that era, as she made countless songs with producer Daan Zinkhaan, Imani settled on a sound that takes foundational elements from traditional R&B music and repackages it with a contemporary, pop-leaning flair. (When you hear her speak about her influences, naming Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, and Erykah Badu right next to The Weeknd and Young Thug, this starts to make a lot of sense.) That led to Papercut, an album that pairs moody, stripped-back R&B cuts like “Mindgames” with summery, radio-ready pop songs like “Slideee.”
Imani says she intentionally wanted to let her music speak first, before she did. But now that she’s made her grand entrance, she doesn’t want to stay mysterious. “I don’t want to hide,” she says, speaking with excitement about her first interview. “I'm very new, but I have a lot to say.” —Eric Skelton
Lancer isn’t going to be one of the UK’s best kept secrets for much longer. He’s been in and around some of the most interesting sounds coming out of the UK for about a year now, playing on stacked lineups for underground leaders like Virus and Asian Paper, racking up production credits for artists like Fimiguerrero, The Twins, and cityboymoe, and consistently releasing his own high-level music and videos.
Lancer is closely associated with Wraith9 and the two face-obscuring, identity obfuscating artists have collaborated multiple times since 2024. While Wraith9 shot to another level thanks to his work with EsDeeKid and Fakemink, Lancer is charting his own path, building an innovative sonic world of surprise sample flips (from Brenda Russell to Stina Nordenstam), slice-of-life rap verses, and a sweetly emotion-driven worldview.
If 2025 set the stage, Lancer is staking his claim as a leading man in 2026. There have been music videos that leave you wanting to know more, songs with endless replay value, and the introduction of more singing to the repertoire. His latest move is signing to XL Recordings, announced alongside “2late,” a synth-pop jam that’s got me hooked, and “Hearts,” a downcast acoustic song that shouldn’t make sense from the same artist who made “Cry,” but totally does. Lancer is a true original in the spirit of the UK’s finest innovators.—Alex Gardner
Photo by Will Shaw
Don’t mess with Texas...the indie scene, that is.
Emma Ogier, a Houston native, hasn’t even released her debut album yet, and she’s already gaining serious traction. Ogier has picked up co-signs from a wide range of indie names, from established favorites like Christian Lee Hutson and Conor Oberst to a new generation of artists including Ethel Cain and Clairo. Her trajectory is starting to feel a lot like Phoebe Bridgers’ early rise: building a name for herself through the inner circles of the indie sphere and studying under Mr. Bright Eyes himself (having toured with them during the band’s 2026 anniversary shows for I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning). She’s made these moves, remarkably, all before ever putting out a proper full-length. As this trajectory continues, Ogier’s eventual breakout feels inevitable.
Her music is the key player in what makes that momentum feel so natural. There’s an earnestness to Ogier’s songwriting, paired with earworms and catchy hooks that make her songs immediately approachable. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself humming the chorus of “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” while you’re washing dishes. —Katie Clayton
Photo by Bernice Mulenga
As music pummels ahead at the speed of AI prompt theft, not much makes me happier than artists who prove that Taking Your Time (Daniel Ek gasps) is worthwhile. So it was no surprise, one night in June, as lunar craters glistened down the barrel of a telescope and the masenqos of "Eshi" glittered in my headphones, that I caught myself muttering الحمد لله for Alewya.
This summer, five years after her first EP and a 2021 Little Simz tour, the painter/ performer/producer/guitarist/ATV rider released her debut album, Zero, letting us stretch the definition of “new” for an artist who packs so much voodoo-drum-backed defiance into 15 tracks. Moonwalking above the rat race, switch-boarding earthly sounds into a genre Pangea with her beloved lava fields of Afar at the heart. "London to Japan, São Paulo to Manila… Sounds from the east in the worldwide streets…" Tuning in is to witness Alewya render (and learn) her own universe, acts of becoming set to wax, while receiving your own celestial compass for divergent paths.
"Even though my culture is highlighted, it isn't the centre of my identity," Alewya tells P&P. "These are all parts of me, but really, I'm a human being exploring what I'm made of and how I've experienced life."
Alewya can sing like calligraphy, rituals in Lalibela, and a seduction titan in the same minute. Her intricate productions, crafted with Craigie Dodds and Dean James Barratt, would fit just fine emanating out of minarets, Addis Ababa skaters’ bluetooth speakers, towering sound systems from Kingston to Punjab to Brixton, or Sports Banger club nights with Haitian and Palestinian flags adorning the walls. And then there’s “Eshi,” the aforementioned crown jewel in a near-peerless body of work
“That song taught me that vulnerability can exist simply in the sincerity of a moment,” Alewya says. “Even in the texture of the voice, in the choices you make, and in knowing when to leave something alone. I was over it all and just wanted to leave the song where it was. And that’s what it is now.”
Zero invites us into its crafter’s story, but also encourages us to see what we can summon from the vibrations within every atom: electrons that seem like nil in isolation and compose existence in aggregate. Applause may not motivate Alewya, but her message guarantees it anyway.—Alex Siber