Welcome to AP&R, where we highlight rising artists who are on their way to becoming your new favorite. Below, we’ve rounded up a handful of names from around the world who either just dropped music or have new music on the way very soon. These are the August up-and-comers, artists picked for their standout sound, from frank emo-folk to shapeshifting dance.
Read more: 25 best albums of 2024 so far
Ok Cowgirl
Earlier this month, buzzy Brooklyn indie outfit Ok Cowgirl released their debut album Couldn’t Save Us From My Gut. Founded by singer-songwriter Leah Lavigne, the group were clearly eager to make use of their momentum — which has been swift and steep since Not My First Rodeo, their first EP. The new LP, produced by Alex Farrar (Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, Indigo de Souza), sees the band grow their own introspective brand of indie rock. CSUFMG is a landscape that leaves room for dichotomy, and is built on emotion. Track by track, Lavigne’s sparkling vocals lead the listener through a full spectrum of feelings — in love to lovesick, in despair to full catharsis. Sonically, the album weaves from synth-heavy dream pop to the grittier ebb and flow of fuzzy power chords, leaning heavy on the “Larry David” crescendo, stepping back into softness on “Forever.” If you see the beauty in tension and release, this one’s for you. —Anna Zanes
Nourished By Time
Last year was tremendously groundbreaking for Baltimore singer-songwriter and producer Nourished By Time. He received a rapt response upon sharing his debut album, Erotic Probiotic 2, collaborated with Yaeji, and remixed Dry Cleaning’s “Gary Ashby,” who he later supported on tour. This year has properly kept up the momentum. He signed to XL Recordings and released his latest EP, Catching Chickens, which widens the DIY-minded, dancefloor-heavy sound that he introduced on Erotic Probiotic 2. It proves Nourished By Time remains a wildly intriguing shapeshifter who can unspool new sounds and textures on a dime, like the woozy shoegaze on “Poison-Soaked.” Tellingly, he contrasts the EP’s unrestricted bounce with friendship frustrations, capitalistic laments, and paranoia. He also recently featured on evilgiane’s “INSTANT DEATH,” a like-minded collaborator who shares Nourished By Time’s relentless depth. —Neville Hardman
Sex Week
Made up of actor and musician Pearl Amanda Dickson and songwriter/producer Richard Orofino, both polymaths in their own right, the Sex Week sound has been elusive ever since emerging into the creative ether of New York City. Originally spawned from a mixtape made after Orofino heard one of Dickson’s playlists — featuring Liz Phair, Elusin, Walter Egan, and Wolf Alice — Sex Week has since become an eccentric and fierce force to be reckoned with. This has been proven beyond a doubt with their debut, Sex Week EP — which is out today. This is no “dream pop” project — it’s a fever dream with an egg-punk mentality. “I want people to giggle and sing along, and with the others I want them to cry and scream,” Dickson says. Fiending for uncharted waters, the otherworldly EP pulses with an addictive paradox — Orofino’s technical musical background, against the sampling of animal noises and the chaos of black-metal growls. “I think we have very different approaches to writing which really works in our favor,” says Orofino. “I come from a more proper musical background so chords, production, and instrumentation come naturally to me while Pearl is a writer. Her lyrical concepts are so unique and I obsess over her melodies.” The result is exhilarating, even when entering slowcore territory. Top to bottom, the EP is playful, heavy, abstracted, seductive, unsettling — an amalgamation of that could only work if left in the right hands — and considering Sex Week’s lawless, bright chemistry, they were a solid fit for the job. —Anna Zanes
Combat
A couple of weeks ago, Baltimore emo-punks Combat released their Counter Intuitive Records debut, Stay Golden. The album was produced by Origami Angel’s Ryland Heagy and written during bandleader Holden Wolf’s freshman and sophomore years of college — where he was stuck between wading through adulthood while also touring and continuing to run the record label he’d started at 15. The LP captures that period of murky maturity through soul-baring choruses, blistering rock, and high-minded ambition, which could very well be their breakthrough moment. “This is an album about struggling to identify with my own identity that I’d created for myself and most notably struggling to identify with the music scene,” Wolf says. “It’s about trying to understand what it means to ‘Stay Golden’ as a sort of ideal way of living to me and to the people around me.” The band recently announced a U.S. headliner with Arcadia Grey and Leisure Hour, which runs throughout October. —Neville Hardman
Dirt Buyer
Dirt Buyer are an earnest endeavor only here by accident. While living in Boston in 2018, and with time on their hands, New Jersey native Joe Taylor Sutkowski and Model/Actriz’s Ruben Radlauer thought it would be fun to make up a fake label. Then, listing a bunch of nonexistent bands, the plan was to bring them all to life. But it was one riff in particular that heralded Dirt Buyer’s lo-fi but intense entrance into Sutkowski’s life, laying the groundwork for a whole new way of creating. “I hope that in my life, I get to keep writing songs that I like listening to,” Sutkowski told us. “I try not to think about what other people are doing too much, and I try not to think too far ahead, but I do anyway. I’m already thinking about what I’m going to make after this thing that I just made. I make these songs because I have to.” —Steven Loftin
