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Just as the once cultish UK rap underground – a scene bubbling with raw, unfiltered flair – is being put under the spotlight, another character spawns from the chaos. Enter Ciel: the 19-year-old “Cyberpunk Yardie” reprogramming trap’s source code. The London rapper scored his breakout moment in 2023 with his glitchy, genre-blurring tape ‘CIELMYRIAD’, a cult favourite that introduced his warped blend of dancehall, trap and electronic madness to the […]

It’s only taken three years for Cortisa Star to go from making messy beats in her bedroom to teetering on the edge of being music’s next “it” girl. The 19-year-old artist first started making her blown-out, distorted internet rap as an escape from the isolation of rural Delaware, a place where she felt like “the most different person in the room 90 per cent of the time”. READ MORE: Underscores: […]

“One day, I just woke up and said, ‘You’ve got to express yourself in whatever way you want’,” JD Cliffe told NME when we first met him in 2024. That sentiment has been his guide for his uncompromising music since, including the riotous ‘Buss Ur Head’ – one of our Best Songs of 2024. With thrashing guitars and blaring drums, the north-west Londoner brought rap and rock into the same […]

Any artist worth their salt is focused on growth. For Japanese girl group ME:I, that objective is always top of mind. Inspired by the word mirai, which means future in Japanese, their name reflects a goal to push forward as representatives of a new generation of J-pop artists. It’s a lofty mission to carry out while becoming “your own person”, as Ran, one of ME:I’s 11 members, puts it in […]

Westside Cowboy have spoken to NME about how it feels to have won a slot at Worthy Farm this June after winning Glastonbury‘s Emerging Talent Competition 2025. READ MORE: The NME 100 – essential new artists for 2025 The Emerging Talent Competition was launched in 2004 and previous finalists include Mercury Prize winners English Teacher, Flohio, Declan McKenna, She Drew The Gun, Scouting For Girls, The Subways and Izzy Bizu. […]

“We might as well just say ‘go fuck it’ – ’cause we’re all gonna die die die!” vocalist Clara Bach shouts with carefree abandon. That’s the euphoric chorus of Punchbag’s debut single ‘Fuck It’, a blast of punk-infused rave-pop that embodies Bach and her brother Anders’ no-rules ethos towards making music. With his pounding drums and siren synths, it recalls Icona Pop and Charli XCX’s 2014 banger ‘I Don’t Care […]