My Favorite Artists You’ve Never Heard Of

15 artists under 100,000 monthly listeners on spotify you should know

There is a great satisfaction in finding music before the algorithms do, before the girlies on TikTok do their bidding and run a song into the ground via text-over-face think-piece-paragraph or free verse poetry that mostly doesn’t make any sense (or am I just not ~intellectual~ enough?). It’s similar to stumbling across a crumbling diner on the edge of town that looks perpetually closed but has the best grilled cheese you’ve ever tasted on the menu. There’s pride in the obscurity. Pure delight.

As a chronic lurker in the lesser-lit corridors of Spotify, I’ve developed a sixth sense for sniffing out the artists just under the radar. The people I believe should similarly garner crowds like Lady Gaga’s recent show in Brazil did with over 2.5 million bodies in attendance (okay, maybe not this famous, performers like her are few-times-a-generation type, but hopefully you’re picking up what I’m putting down).

Not to toot my own horn, but my before-they-were-mega-famous résumé includes the likes of Ethel Cain, Magdalena Bay, The 1975, 5 Seconds of Summer, and plenty more I can’t think of off the top of my head. I have always been elbow-deep in the Discover Weekly trench, sifting through the digital dust for gold.

These fine folks are musicians under 100,000 monthly listeners, small enough to feel personal, big enough to break your heart. And I’d be a pretty terrible friend if I didn’t share them with you.

Music has always been this weird form of social currency. You’re either the kind of person who shares what you love, or the kind who hoards it like an emotional dragon, guarding your little pile of Bandcamp gems from the masses. I’ve tried being both. But lately, I’ve been leaning towards generosity, towards becoming more forthcoming with my musical menagerie. Maybe it’s a side effect of growing up, or maybe I just want written proof that I was here first if any of these people subsequently hit the Spotify jackpot (the gatekeeping teenager will always live inside of me, she is gnawing at the bars of her enclosure right now).

You can say you were here before they blew up, be that friend that pulls out the perfectly esoteric artist for the vibe. I’m here to initiate that.

Without further ado, time to put you on:

Francis of Delirium

monthly listeners: 101,022
genre: alternative, indie rock

Okay, so she technically has over 100,000 monthly listeners, but only by the skin of the 100,000’s teeth. And I love her so much that I’m including her anyway. Her song Blue Tuesday has been on repeat since I discovered it in March 2024, being my Top Song last year with over 288 listens. There’s a kind of raw ache in Francis of Delirium’s music that feels like it’s read from a diary, pages smeared with glitter and rage and yearning. Growing up in Luxembourg, Jana Bahrich channels the ghost of 1990s grunge in the best way. It’s a little like listening to a teenage Liz Phair possessed by the spirit of new indie rock, wanting to escape the suburbs and old love, but too nostalgic to really ever let go. Her tunes are what plays in the background of a coming of age film set in the sunny state of California, but also holds the vibes of a summer spent in the dark Luxembourgish forest. I am in love with her music!

Georgia Anne Muldrow

monthly listeners: 88,113
genre: r&b, soul, jazz

Imagine yourself peacefully dancing across a meadow of sweetgrass and red clover under the bright summer sun, the warm breeze biting your cheeks as the birds chirp from the trees. That’s how Georgia Anne Muldrow’s music feels. She doesn’t make music so much as she opens portals to universes where you float along with the beat as an amorphous blob on the sheet of music. If Sun Ra had a niece who was equally into jazz and neo-soul, she’s the one. Her work is lush with intention, almost like you absorb it through your skin instead of your ears, and she is my go-to musician to set the mood of my yoga classes. Even her songs without words are meditative and furious and fun and dressed in funk, there’s something for everyone here, even if jazz isn’t your typical genre. She is a future classic, and I really hope she blows up. She deserves all the flowers and recognition.

Faetooth

monthly listeners: 69,997
genre: metal

Women in metal!!!! Please more, always more! Faetooth sounds like if fairies got radicalized and decided to take to the streets to destroy whatever was in their way. Doom metal filtered through a Tumblr-esque lens, their songs make you feel like you’ve stumbled into the middle of a ritual, but someone hands you a joint and a sword and tells you to go into battle. Based in Los Angeles, they blend heavy riffs with dreamy vocals that feel both confrontational and joyous. These girls put a new-age spin on a classic genre that revitalizes the sound and is heaven in the ears of a metal fan. They are what happens when witchy girls with electric guitars and a vendetta get together and cast spells to hypnotize you into their grip. Faetooth’s music is a refreshing bite in a scene normally so drenched in testosterone, if you are a fan of metal, you will not be disappointed with their sound.

The Detroit Cobras

monthly listeners: 65,026
genre: garage rock

From the best city in the world (and I’m not biased just because I live here) these women are firecrackers ready to be set off. If you’ve ever drank whiskey in a dirty dress at the back of a dive bar, you will be an instant fan of The Detroit Cobras. Hailing from my very own hometown of Detroit, Michigan, these bitches are badass. And I mean it. They’re not so much a garage rock band as they are garage rock personified: greasy, fun as hell, raunchy, and just the right amount of dangerous. Their covers of forgotten soul and R&B gems with a twist are bliss to the ears if you are still caught in the grunge era like myself and refuse to take off the flannel. This is Detroit at its most alive, with loud, crunchy choruses yelled into your ears, prettied up in a leopard print coat, cigarette dangling, daring you to dance with a switchblade in your boot.

Uwade

monthly listeners: 63,514
genre: alternative, indie pop

I had the pleasure of seeing this lovely folksy woman as an opener for Fleet Foxes back in 2023, and she’s featured a few times on one of my favorite Fleet Foxes albums, Shore. Listening to Uwade feels like traipsing through a dream of long forgotten memories, that’s the only way I can put it. These recollections feel just out of reach, but your soul is soothed of the stress by her soft guitar and taken to a place that feels like home. Her voice is so pure it feels illegal, like it belongs in a cathedral rather than on your glitchy Bluetooth speaker. Her songs are gentle and unhurried, thoughtful with folk-adjacent arrangements, and they carry a tune of grace that makes time feel a little slower. It’s music for sitting very still and realizing you’ve been sitting in the sun for slightly too long, but the kiss from the rays pinching your skin is safe.

Asobi Seksu

monthly listeners: 58,567
genre: rock, pop, alternative

Cool band alert!! They were doing dream pop before TikTok made dream pop a thing again. There’s really only one way I can describe Asobi Seksu’s music, and it’s that it feels like walking through a rain storm in the middle of the night, but if your brain was made entirely of VHS tapes getting waterlogged and static-y. A New York based project, they’re fluent in both Japanese and English, bringing a fusion to their songs that feels like half-translated dreams you almost remember, but are too fuzzy around the edges to really grab onto any real meaning. Their guitars shimmer over distorted beats, their vocals hover like a ghost standing at your ear, everything feels very cinematic and underwater, like the whisper of an ocean siren never fully formed under the surface, calling you to the shore. You will not be disappointed when you listen to their music, I surely wasn’t.

Crying

monthly listeners: 52,380
genre: indie pop, synth pop, chiptune

If a Gameboy fell in love with a guitar pedal and started a band in your college dorm room, it would sound like Crying. No seriously. Imagine video game music taken out of some cheap choose your own adventure flash bit and stick it on an iPod. They’re part hyperpop, part math rock, part 1990s anime opening credits, and all enjoyment. Their music is best listened to sprinting through the mall pretending it’s 2003, you’re a mall goth wearing your JNCO jeans with a plastic sword in your backpack and unresolved emotions in your chest. I haven’t done that, and probably won’t, but their music tells me I should. Crying don’t ask for your attention, they launch themselves in your ears with loud guitars and leading drums, immediately like a glitter bomb, and suddenly you’re fourteen again with everything mattering a little bit too much.

Nuclear Daisies

monthly listeners: 40,161
genre: shoegaze

There’s something cinematic but also quite suburban about Nuclear Daisies. Their compositions are so lush the music flows into your head, giving you the perfect eargasm in ways you could’ve never imagined. I feel that same sentiment with most shoegaze bands, but Nuclear Daisies has a secret sauce that only a modern band living in this era could capture. Their sound is very lo-fi but high tempo at the same time, coming at you fast with jangly noises you can’t pinpoint the origin of, and it’s all slightly haunting. Think post-punk with a warm beer buzz, perhaps someone found a shoegaze cassette from 1996 and played it on a dying Walkman. Not a lot of polish or clean cuts, but that’s the magic. They make music for how nostalgia feels… blurry, bruised, but still really beautiful. I found them really randomly one day while searching for a new album to listen to, and I feel the need to share them now that I have the perfect opportunity.

The Wake

monthly listeners: 38,559
genre: post-punk, synth pop

Man do I love obscure 1980s bands that never really took off but have such an amazing sound it’s shocking that they didn’t. The Wake may never have their blow up modern day moment, as they sporadically released music until the 2010s, but a girl can dream. The Wake sound like the soundtrack to a really cool party you were invited to by a date you barely know in Bushwick, that ended in tears and dripping eyeliner because who can trust someone who lives in Bushwick anyway? At least you found a cool band from it. They’re a Scottish post-punk band who hover in that magical space between goth and pop, where melancholy might wear a leather jacket and smoke a chic slim cigarette. Their songs are clean, but heavy with longing, like they’re always five minutes away from disappearing out the palm of your hand. They’re the kind of band you instantly fall in love with, and wish they were still making songs to this day.

Faith Zapata

monthly listeners: 36,892
genre: alternative, indie, folk

Blending rock and a personal mythology, with a voice made of silk, Faith Zapata sings secrets into your ears like a best friend you feel like you know as closely as the back of your hand. Her songs touch you in a half autobiographical and half haunted way, but all the way enjoyable. There’s an honesty to her music that feels like sitting on the roof of a car overlooking a scenic pass, drinking something from a long-warmed bottle, and thinking about all the people you used to be along the way. It’s more like ghost music for the still-living looking for beautiful compositions, full of lyrics that sound like they were scrawled on napkins at diners, then put to melody in someone’s bedroom. You get the feeling she’s just trying to survive, and maybe write something that makes the surviving feel worthwhile.

Faith Zapata

happens to be a beautiful writer here on Substack, clearly possessing many talents. You should give her work a read too after listening to her music.

Rumskib

monthly listeners: 34,497
genre: rock, shoegaze

Rumskib is like if Cocteau Twins had a cousin who was slightly less cryptic but equally as dreamy. Danish dream pop that sounds like it was made entirely out of fog and crushed velvet, Rumskib lives in that space where fantasy holds your hand. Her vocals are gossamer-thin and often incomprehensible, swirling, and I mean literally swirling, like you’re stuck in a snow globe full of broken synthesizers and heartbreak, but make it celestial. Listening to her voice is like taking an ambient bath inside your own head. It’s what life would sound like if it had a European passport and a shoegaze addiction (and maybe your life is like that, mine is not, unfortunately). It’s also tragically under-discovered, which makes liking her feel like you’re in on a beautiful little secret that no one else has earned yet.

Pom Poko

monthly listeners: 31,259
genre: alternative, indie

Think cartoon but with a punk twist on a sugar high. That is Pom Poko. Hailing from Norway (where evidently they spike the water with chaotic genius), they blend pop, punk, noise rock, and complete anarchy into something that should not work, but absolutely does. There’s an intelligence behind every track, like they’re conducting tiny musical experiments in absurdity and joy, to see how much you can take. One minute you’re dancing, the next you’re laughing, and then you’re just sitting there wondering what kind of person could even think to make a song sound like that. It’s high-energy, high-weirdness, and completely alive like a kid with ADHD running through a toy store. Every song is a ping pong match, frenzied, and is perfect for someone as sporadic and unable to sit still like myself.

Big Joanie

monthly listeners: 20,701
genre: alternative, indie

Punk was never supposed to be a boy’s club!! This is what punk looks like when it grows up, but doesn’t mellow out. Very reminiscent of the Riot Grrrl ethos, Big Joanie is a black feminist punk band from London who holds nothing back, and I wouldn’t want them to because there is magic laced within these lyrics. They take the bones of punk (rage, resistance, reverb) and make something new, necessary, and weirdly tender. These women are lean and purposeful with the words they choose, full of personal feedback and a developing philosophy. It’s the kind of punk that doesn’t shout because it knows it’s saying something worth listening to without having to have blasted ears. Big Joanie is here to build a future, not just to scream about the past, and I hope the road is substantial for them.

Human Leather

monthly listeners: 1,658
genre: dance, electronic, rock

What a joy to be able to find artists with such a small following it feels like you’re bursting into something private, like a basement show you pretended to know the name of the band for to get in. Human Leather makes music for lonely people looking to dance to a beautiful synth wave in a room full of other lonely people. It’s slightly like if Depeche Mode got dumped and started over. Based in Portland (of course), they lean into retro-futurism with sincerity, crafting tracks that feel both romantic and terminally online. With only one album and no news of anything else, I mourn what Human Leather could’ve been, and I’m really hoping they’re planning something special behind the scenes. Their sound is a hologram of heartbreak, being vaguely tragic in a weird, deludedly reverbed way. You need to hear them!

Lola Leng

monthly listeners: 416
genre: rock, blues

Girl, I’m really putting you on here. It’s rare to stumble across musicians with such small followings that I know will be someone some day. You have the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon of a musician I believe is going to blow up once she has more than four singles out. The daughter of Queen’s Roger Taylor, she uses that nepotism for good. Her voice is captivating, like the space between a sunrise where the sky is an orangey lush pink fading into deep blue. She floats somewhere between R&B and ambient pop, but never settles into either. She feels like an old soul stuck inside a very stylish twenty-somethings body, and I can’t help but think her father is a big influence. No judgement, I really like what she’s putting out, and can’t wait for a full length album.

So there you have it. 15 artists you can smugly reference at parties to seem more edgy and mysterious.

If even one of them makes it onto your On Repeat playlist, then I have done my job as a self-appointed curator of cool. Just don’t be weird about them when they get super famous and start opening for Phoebe Bridgers or playing on the soundtrack for the next A24 horror romance. We were here first. We knew.

If you would like more recommendations, I have plenty more where that came from. If I am truly being forthcoming, I can make another part to this sometime in the future. Music is my life, and sharing it with people I know will appreciate the sounds tickles me even more.

Now go forth, stream responsibly, and remember: clout is temporary, but obscure music taste is forever.

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