Natanya Popoola is a British-Caribbean-Nigerian singer, songwriter, and producer from North-West London whose music fuses R&B, alt-pop, neo-soul, jazz, and Caribbean influences into what she calls an 'unboxable' sound. Born September 5, 2002 to an Indo-Trinidadian mother and Nigerian father, she trained at the Julian Joseph Jazz Academy, earned a degree in English Literature at UCL, and released her debut EP 'Sorrow At Sunrise' in 2023. Her 2025 EP 'Feline's Return' (via Human Re-Sources, co-produced with Oscar Scheller) earned co-signs from SZA, Doechii, Tyler, The Creator, and Janet Jackson, a BBC Radio 1 premiere, and features on Billboard's '15 Hip-Hop, Caribbean and R&B Artists to Watch in 2026.' Her alter ego 'Feline' - a catlike seductress with a signature cat-eye - anchors a fiercely self-directed creative vision that has drawn comparisons to early-era SZA while carving out entirely new territory.
Nxdia (born Nadia Ahmed) is an Egyptian-British alt-pop and pop-punk artist based in Manchester and London whose bilingual English-Arabic songwriting, queer identity, and confessional lyricism about obsession, desire, and self-discovery have made them one of the most exciting emerging voices in UK indie music. Known for hooky, pulsating tracks like 'She Likes a Boy' and 'Jennifer's Body', Nxdia's debut mixtape 'I Promise No One's Watching' surpassed 100 million Spotify streams by August 2025, and their 2026 single 'Cool' cements a more confident, genre-blurring new era.
Olivia Isabel Rodrigo is an American singer-songwriter and actress who burst onto the global stage in January 2021 with 'drivers license', a debut single that shattered Spotify streaming records and debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 - making her, at 17, the youngest artist ever to top the chart on debut. Her debut album SOUR (2021) and sophomore record GUTS (2023) both opened at #1 in multiple countries, cementing her as one of the defining voices of Gen Z alt-pop and pop-punk. The GUTS World Tour (2024-2025) grossed over $209 million - the highest-grossing tour by any artist born in the 21st century. A three-time Grammy winner, Billboard Woman of the Year, Time Entertainer of the Year, and founder of reproductive rights initiative Fund 4 Good, Rodrigo is simultaneously a chart phenomenon, an arena headliner, and a outspoken activist - with her third studio album due June 2026.
REI AMI (born Sarah Yeeun Lee) is a Korean-American singer, rapper, and genre-bending artist from Germantown, Maryland, who blends hip-hop, R&B, alternative pop, and pop-punk aggression into a sound entirely her own. After breaking through with Sub Urban's viral 'Freak' (2020) and debuting with her mixtape FOIL (2021), she catapulted to global stardom in 2025 as Zoey in Netflix's animated film KPop Demon Hunters, voicing and performing as part of the fictional K-pop trio HUNTR/X. Their single 'Golden' became Netflix's most-watched film's signature track, hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and won both a Grammy and an Oscar — firsts for any K-pop song.
Sophia Stel is a 27-year-old Vancouver-based Canadian alt-pop artist, singer, and self-producer whose music blends dreamy synths, auto-tuned alto vocals, skittering breakbeats, and rave-adjacent textures into something critics call the 'sonic lovechild of Ethel Cain and 070 Shake.' Growing up on Vancouver Island in a large religious household with 10 siblings, she taught herself production on GarageBand before building a makeshift studio in a nightclub basement. After years of bartending to fund her art, she broke through with her 2024 debut EP Object Permanence, scored a viral TikTok moment with 'I'll Take It' (8.6M+ Spotify streams), walked the Ann Demeulemeester SS26 runway, graced the NME cover, and in early 2026 became only the second artist signed to A24 Music - all while recording mostly from home on a 2013 MacBook.