New Artists to Watch as presented by Obscure Agency – April 2026
In partnership with Obscure Agency
Obscure Agency presents five voices expanding the boundaries of sound and identity.
Some records land like statements. Others feel like thresholds. This month’s artists are not here to entertain passively. Their work holds presence, tension, and intent. There’s elegance, but also rupture. Beauty, but never decoration.
Whether rooted in club culture, ambient grief, distorted low-end, or cinematic poetics, each project reflects a shift. This isn’t a showcase of trends. It’s a study in direction.
Alice Risolino (Alvise Salerno’s Selection)
Across four independently released singles, she has focused on emotional unrest and relational tension, not just romantic fallout, but the quieter fractures that linger in everyday life. The production, handled by Francesco Dal Poz, is clean and deliberate. In a landscape crowded by speed and saturation, Risolino opts for control. The arrangements leave space. The vocals hold it.
Her first EP, Se Vuoi Ascoltami, released on April 3rd collect her existing releases alongside new material, including a cover from Angelina Mango. Momentum is building steadily. She recently became the first female artist to duet with Tony Pitony, ahead of his Sanremo 2026 appearance.
Mark Fernyhough
Growing up in a reportedly haunted English mansion sounds like a press angle. In Mark Fernyhough’s case, it feels like context. His music carries that sense of echo and distance, something slightly unearthly but grounded in craft.
His latest single, Socialites, unfolds as a windswept, cello-driven meditation where history and intimacy intersect. References to figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Jean Seberg aren’t ornamental; they anchor a broader reflection on power, image, and myth. The track features a full live band, with additional vocals from Andrew Montgomery of 90s indie outfit Geneva, adding further texture to an already expansive arrangement.
Now based between Edinburgh and Berlin, Fernyhough has opened for Suede, with Brett Anderson publicly supporting his work. His songwriting lineage draws from Roxy Music, Bowie, and Nico, while songs like Berlin and the upcoming World Was Crying lean into a romantic austerity reminiscent of Jeff Buckley and early Chris Isaak.
Fernyhough operates across disciplines. Recent performances include a set at Hosek Contemporary, a 1910 cargo ship turned Berlin art space, and an instrumental score accompanying an experimental film projected onto Manhattan Bridge during New York’s Light Year art festival. Beyond music, he is a Vogue-featured photographer developing conceptual films and imagery that blend fashion, pop art, and retro futurism.
There is theatre in his work, but never excess. The atmosphere is deliberate. The melancholy is controlled. Socialites carries a resonance that outlasts its final note.
David Cerquetti
David Cerquetti works with a precise sense of space. Based in Los Angeles, the Italian composer moves across film scoring, orchestration, and production with a focus on structure and control.
His latest score for The Krampus Rises, developed at Sony Pictures Studios, runs over 80 minutes. The pacing is measured, the tension gradual. Nothing is pushed for effect. The writing stays close to the image, allowing the narrative to unfold without interference.
Across projects like Hunting Ava Bravo and several Italian films, his approach remains consistent. Emotion is carried through harmony and arrangement rather than emphasis. There is no need to underline what is already there.
His harmonic language draws from neo-Riemannian theory, shaping progressions that move with subtle instability. Electronic elements sit within the composition, integrated rather than layered on top.
Outside of scoring, Cerquetti runs Evander Productions, developing projects between Europe and the United States. The direction is clear. Build carefully, stay intentional, avoid excess.
nocapz.
At 23, Samuel Soares, known as nocapz., plays with the restraint of someone older and the curiosity of someone just getting started. Born in Salvador, Bahia, and now based in São Paulo, he carries the swing of Brazilian percussion into a house framework shaped by 90s textures and modern minimal precision.
His sets are built on digging. Not obvious drops or shortcuts, but groove-led selections that move between house, tech house, minimal, and Afro house without forcing transitions. There’s clarity in the programming. Space between elements. Rhythm first.
That sensibility has translated into releases on Hot Creations, Solid Grooves, and Gruuv, with support from Joseph Capriati, Marco Carola, Michael Bibi, and The Martinez Brothers. Upcoming cuts include Too Much on DFTD, Paris on Solid Grooves, and Sunflowers and All I Know on Mochakk’s MOTRAXX.
On stage, whether at Só Track Boa, Surreal Park, or Mochakk Calling in Malta, nocapz. keeps the focus where it belongs: on the floor. No spectacle. Just momentum.
The groove speaks for itself.
Grace de Gier
Grace di Gier moves within cinematic alternative rock with a clear sense of scale. Born in Colombia and based in the Netherlands, she writes and performs in both Spanish and English, shaping a body of work that crosses borders without flattening its identity.
At the core of the project is her ongoing creative partnership with Colombian producer and multi-instrumentalist Edgar Grimaldos. Working as a duo, they have developed a shared language that carries through her releases. On DONE, that relationship is fully present. Grimaldos performs all instruments and co-shapes the production, aligning sound and direction from the ground up.
Recorded in Paris and mastered by Grammy-winning engineer Adam Ayan, DONE moves between weight and restraint. Distorted guitars and cinematic builds open into quieter passages, with piano lines and softer sections holding space before the track rises again. The dynamic range gives the song its tension and release.
Her trajectory reflects steady expansion. Grace de Gier’s work stays grounded in intention. The writing is direct. The sound is controlled. The project holds together as one vision, carried by two voices working in sync.
Daniel de Boer
Daniel de Boer approaches music from a composer’s perspective. Structure comes first, then feeling settles into it. A Dutch bassist, singer, and award-winning composer, he spent years working across orchestral and theatrical contexts before shifting toward a more personal direction.
His time with the Metropole Orchestra, Holland Opera, and international ensembles shaped a broad musical vocabulary, but it was at Berklee College of Music in Valencia that his solo project took form. What followed is a body of work that moves between cultures and genres without forcing fusion into a statement. The result is what he defines as “world pop,” though the term feels more functional than descriptive.
His latest EP, The Turnaround, brings together musicians from different parts of the world, building arrangements that feel collaborative rather than layered. There’s a sense of openness in the compositions, space for each element to exist without competing for attention.
De Boer doesn’t position himself within a scene. His work sits slightly outside of it, informed by discipline and shaped by long-form thinking. Less immediate, more considered. A different kind of pace to close the list.
April speaks in bright colors. It listens, it start back again, and it asks the world to connect.
These five artists do exactly that. They don’t fill the silence. They give it sound.
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