Rolling Stone UK’s Future of Music 2026: see the full list
As part of our Future of Music plans, Rolling Stone UK selects the best of music’s new voices — 25 artists who are set to make 2026 their year
Putting together our annual Future of Music list – the 25 British and Irish acts we believe signpost where the music of these isles is going next – allows us to take a 360-degree view of the lay of the land. In trawling through the music of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of new homegrown acts in the year since our 2025 list dropped, certain trends and styles have become impossible to ignore.
Most clear is that we remain in the era of the solo female. February’s BRIT Awards saw Olivia Dean sweep the main categories, following on from similar dominance from Charli XCX the year before, and RAYE before that. The UK continues to produce the best and most exciting female pop stars on the planet, and the next cab off the rank is our Future of Music cover star, Sienna Spiro.
With the vintage glamour of Lana Del Rey and the pipes to rival RAYE, the London-born 20-year-old exudes star power and is sure to be the latest jewel in the UK’s pop music crown. “I want to be remembered,” she sings on glorious single ‘The Visitor’, voicing a hope that feels like a certainty at this point.
“I feel lucky to have just been alive in the same timeline as them,” Spiro says of her British female peers and inspirations, namely Amy Winehouse and Adele. “I’m honoured for the comparison. I really hope I can do even half of what those women have done in my life.”
In the Winehouse-adjacent sounds of the endlessly charismatic Skye Newman, the Dua Lipa-endorsed and highly ambitious work of Alessi Rose, and the outstanding MEEK – something of a British Chappell Roan – Spiro isn’t the only artist here moulding the future of British pop music in her image.
For bands, once the bread and butter of lists like these, it’s across the Irish sea where we find the most intriguing new sounds. Madra Salach, Cliffords and The Scratch all weave traditional Irish music into their songs alongside droning folk, anthemic indie and aggressive metal respectively, and this balance of tradition and boundary-breaking is consistent and thrilling.
Also impossible to ignore is the explosion of UK Underground rap (UK Ug). Leading the scene are the enigmatic EsDeeKid and fakemink, who are already breaking the States and giving British rap its biggest shot in the arm since the glory days of grime.
In some years, selecting 25 acts to represent the Future of Music has felt like a stretch. In 2026, this list barely scratches the surface. Through these acts, we tell the story of a new era of music that is uncompromising, politically engaged and – in an increasingly dark world – providing new reasons to be proud of being British and Irish in a way that only music can.
– Will Richards, Senior Writer
Sienna Spiro
With a voluminous beehive, Sienna Spiro is Twiggy meets Lana Del Rey. When she opens her mouth – both in conversation and in the huge, belting romanticism of her UK Top 10 single ‘Die on This Hill’ – she’s Adele, but lifted from Sloane Square, rather than Tottenham.
Like her contemporaries Olivia Dean and RAYE, Spiro is operating in the space of soulful, classic pop, deeply traditional in its bones, but with a touch of the self-awareness of Lola Young and PinkPantheress, who in turn follow in the caustic, witty British lineage of Lily Allen and Kate Nash.
These artists are the latest “British invasion”, female edition, and Spiro is the newest addition to the group. Critics and fans are being as gauche as to call Spiro the next Amy Winehouse, the next Adele. “I feel lucky to have just been alive in the same timeline as them,” she says in her new Rolling Stone UK Future of Music cover feature. “I’m honoured for the comparison. I really hope I can do even half of what those women have done in my life.”
You don’t create a look and a sound from a previous time by allowing in a cacophony of influences, and Spiro does everything she can to avoid modern trends in music and culture. “I think that’s been a bit of a downfall of music –when musicians are too aware,” she says. “We have so much access now, you can post something and see what people feel, and what other people are doing so quickly. You don’t have to go to a show; you can just open your phone and see it. I think it’s made music a little less original. It’s something you have to be really conscious about: making sure everything is coming from you.” (Hannah Ewens)
Read our full Future of Music cover feature with Sienna Spiro here.
EssDeeKid
In just two years, anonymous Scouse rapper EsDeeKid has gone from being a complete unknown to one of the most talked about acts on the planet. The elusive masked MC, considered one of 2025’s most significant breakout British artists, has become known for a heavy, claustrophobic sound built around distorted, booming 808s and slippery, futuristic synth lines. It’s a fresh formula that demands attention, and one that’s become commonplace among the rapidly developing “UK Ug” scene EsDee is spearheading. In fact, a number of zeitgeisty sonic trends became entrenched with last year’s release of his influential debut album, Rebel, from the penchant for snappy sub two minute tracks to the UK ascendance of muddied, trap influenced instrumentals.
The hype around the enigmatic Liverpudlian has only been intensified by his repeated interview refusals and commitment to keeping his identity firmly under wraps. Speculation that EsDeeKid was in fact Hollywood actor Timothée Chalamet eventually ended when a viral remix of the thumping track ‘4 Raws’ appeared late last year, featuring Chalamet himself. A recent performance from EsDee at Gucci’s star studded AW26 show in Milan was further proof of the rapper’s stratospheric rise.
Crucially, though, his heady trajectory hasn’t taken anything away from the unapologetically raw sound he’s been pushing. His rhythm sections are still explosive and headache inducing, while his lyrics are grounded in street life, from bars in ‘Phantom’, like “Blacked out like a phantom / Me phone keeps having a tantrum / Emo boy, I got the party lit / This song your national anthem” to the memorable “I’m a scumbag / I was raised in Liverpool slums, lad” in ‘4 Raws’.
EsDeeKid may have blown up online, but it’s important to recognise how integral the live experience is to his sound. The suffocating, hyped up walls of noise he creates alongside trusted producer Wraith9 are perfectly built for live settings. According to pioneering rapper Lancey Foux, a huge influence on the Liverpudlian and many of his peers, “EsDeeKid wants to be a big touring artist – I can see it and feel it.”
In 2025, he made serious strides in this direction, capping off his Rebel tour with a packed out headline show at London’s Electric Ballroom, weeks before his debut record became Spotify’s most streamed hip hop album in the world. With the platform he’s built for himself, in 2026, the world is at EsDeeKid’s feet. (Fred Garratt-Stanley)
MEEK
The weirdness of modern life means that things can feel shit and excellent all at the same time. Few people know this better than MEEK, the rising pop star who owned that mantra when she delivered a debut single for the ages earlier this year in the form of uber-camp viral banger ‘Fabulous’. “I just got my heart broken, but I look fucking fabulous,” she affirmed. It won’t win any points for subtlety, but it feels like MEEK – for our money the answer to the not-so-common question “what if Chappell Roan and Freddie Mercury had a baby?” – might just be the fucking fabulous pop star that British music has spent a long time waiting for.
She’s also a formidable live performer, as Rolling Stone UK witnessed first hand during her sold out show at London’s Garage in April, where she also showcased the electro-pop banger ‘i want love, but not that much’. It was a lovely full circle moment for MEEK, who previously worked at the venue, but now there’s the sense that bigger rooms and opportunities, along the lines of her music slot on Saturday Night Live UK in early May, await her. Here is a hugely exciting pop star at the start of an incredibly promising journey we can’t wait to witness. (Nick Reilly)
Silver Gore
Speak to producer Ethan P Flynn and vocalist Ava Gore about their coming together as Silver Gore, and you’ll find that one word tends to dominate the conversation: fun. “That’s the main thing. We just want people to have a good time listening to our music and to feel triumphant and energised,” Gore tells Rolling Stone UK.
They’re not wrong either. Influenced by the highs of 2000s electro pop, they feel like they could be the spiritual forebears of bands like MGMT and are indeed capable of making party-starting anthems that can stand shoulder to shoulder with that duo too. The recent single ‘Black Cherry Liqueur’ is armed with a steady synth beat that will worm its way into the deepest recesses of your brain, while ‘All the Good Men’ has already soundtracked the absolute worldies scored by football fans across the globe on hit game FC 26. (NR)
Westside Cowboy
Leading the charge away from the dark and moody sound characteristic of guitar bands five years back, and towards something warmer and more melodic, are Westside Cowboy. This intoxicating Manchester four-piece have labelled their vibe “Britainicana”, and draw from the likes of Pavement and MJ Lenderman in their country tinged indie rock. Explaining their self designated genre to Rolling Stone UK, they said: “The clearest example we always use is the TV show The End of the Fucking World – that feeling in the show of when things were made and how it had no solid time and no solid setting. The humour and uncanniness of that show is so British, but it’s filmed through this American lens and in these strange landscapes. I think our music reflects that vibe too.”
The music is indeed timeless, but the band’s youthful spirit places them firmly in 2026. On stage, they’re a dizzying ball of energy, led by their excellent drummer Paddy Murphy. It’s also hard not to fall for a band who begin their sets by yelling their band name in unison. With superb new EP So Much Country ’Till We Get There, a debut album in August and a sold out tour with Geese under their belts, “Britainicana” sounds a hell of a lot like the future of music. (Will Richards)
Jazzy
It’s safe to say that Jazzy – real name Yasmine Byrne – has come a very long way since working in her local Tesco’s bakery. She’s now the most streamed female DJ/vocalist globally, her infectious house groover ‘Giving Me’ was nominated for a BRIT Award, and she was also tipped for an Ivor Novello.
Not only did ‘Giving Me’ peak at number three on the UK Official Singles Chart and earn a place in the Top 40 biggest songs of 2023, but it also topped the Official Irish Singles Chart, making Jazzy the first Irish female solo artist to achieve that feat in over a decade. She’s not slowed down since: 2025 saw her playing at Glastonbury, touring America and DJing at Pacha Ibiza each Monday for seven weeks during the summer, as well as releasing ‘High on Me’, a collab with Rossi. Before that, 2024 saw dancefloor-dominating collaborations with KILIMANJARO (‘No Bad Vibes’) and Sonny Fodera (‘Somedays’).
Her biggest team-up to date, though, is undoubtedly ‘Satisfy’, this year’s summer anthem she made in the studio with Calvin Harris. “It still feels crazy that we’ve released a song together,” she says, adding that he had previously topped her bucket list of collaborators.
Up next is a debut album, which Jazzy teases is almost finished. “There are a lot of stories about my experiences and things I’ve gone through, good and bad, from when I started doing this to now,” she says of its themes. Alongside club-ready hits, she hints at “some darker vibes”, adding: “I always like to have a message in my songs, and I feel like people know me for that, so there’ll be plenty on there, but all still under my umbrella.” (Ben Jolley)
Dove Ellis
The music and songwriting of Dove Ellis feels like a hallucination of some of the greatest writers of the 21st century. On his excellent debut album, Blizzard, the Irish songwriter born Thomas O’Donoghue sounds like if Sam Fender had grown up listening to a bit more Radiohead and a bit less Springsteen and earned his stripes playing trad music in the corner of Irish pubs.
Comparisons to Thom Yorke feel inevitable when you hear Ellis’s soaring voice, most strikingly on the towering ‘When You Tie Your Hair Up’, before the delightful skip of the distinctly Celtic ‘Jaundice’ places him in a lineage of traditional Irish music as well as ambitious indie rock.
There’s an intrigue to Ellis when listening to Blizzard, and it’s furthered by the scarcity of information available about him online. The internet will tell you he’s born in 2002… or maybe 2003, and he’s yet to give a full-length interview. When approached for a chat for this very Future of Music list, his team said: “He’s just not overly keen on speaking about himself at present.”
While his music was taking off on TikTok and a major label scrum was taking place for the release of Blizzard, Ellis sheltered himself away, signing to independent Black Butter for the self-produced album that seemingly arrived out of nowhere and introduced Ellis entirely on his own terms. Nodding to this outlook on the track ‘Away You Stride’, he sings: “I’m heading further west, babe / Keep their cameras off my face.”
Despite – or maybe somewhat because of – this hesitance for visibility, the intrigue around Ellis will just increase, and it’s tantalising to want to know more about someone who emerged from the wilderness to release one of the best and most striking debut albums in recent memory. Whether his future will see him embracing the spotlight or continuing to shine in the shadows, his story is one to follow as closely as he’ll allow you to. (WR)
Jim Legxacy
Jim Legxacy’s 2025 mixtape, black british music, was the most exciting UK rap release of last year, if such a categorisation is even accurate. “She don’t like no rapper, so I told her I’m a singer,” he quips on the track ‘new david bowie’, and the mixtape features just as many pop and R&B hooks as it does rap bars.
The Lewisham artist’s influence goes even further away from these sounds, as he raps on ‘father’: “On the block, I was listening to Mitski.” Then there’s ‘06 wayne rooney’, a blindingly catchy pop-punk song that adds yet more strings to this tremendous young artist’s bow. black british music was built around the loss of the musician’s sister, grounding his musical experimentation in both an exorcism and recognition of grief’s impact. It brought him his first MOBO win this year for Best Male Act, and his first BRIT Award nominations, as well as a feature on Dave’s The Boy Who Played the Harp and sold-out shows on both sides of the Atlantic.
On excellent new single ‘idk idk’, he grapples with the impact of the exposure and ponders his post-black british music career. “If I gave them everything and they don’t love me… I dunno, I dunno,” he sings. The razor-sharp insight and sugary vocal that the unsure statement is delivered with serves as confirmation in its own right that this love will indeed continue to flood in.
Earlier this year, London’s new V&A East museum opened with The Music is Black: A British Story, an exhibition tracking the history of Black British music and its cultural impact. With the title of his mixtape, and his entire outlook, Jim Legxacy is playing his part in writing the next chapter of the story.
“A lot of us are technically the first British people in our entire lineage, and that has a huge cultural impact,” he told Rolling Stone last year of growing up as the first British-born generation of millions of African and Caribbean immigrants. “Our identity is still at a point where it’s malleable. We’re figuring out what that is.” To follow this journey of discovery, told through music as boundary-breaking as this, is key to understanding Britain as a whole in 2026. (WR)
Skye Newman
Sharing the sound and style of Skye Newman is a star-studded lineage of British pop stars. The shadow of Amy Winehouse looms large over the youngster’s music, while there is a clear line from Lily Allen too. Her introduction to the world was on the stunning single ‘Family Matters’, which showed the world her shrug towards the struggles she grew up with, singing: “You call it traumatic / But it is what it is / It’s just family matters.”
She told Rolling Stone UK of the song: “Whatever was going on was normal to me. Drugs, violence, all that – that was normal. I think I’m very desensitised to a lot of these things.”
It was the internet that allowed Newman, a working-class kid with no industry connections, to make her mark. “You don’t need much to get your opinion out there, and there’s power in numbers for people who don’t have much,” she told us. “Coming from fuck all, I love what it’s done for me.”
With this self-earned foot in the door, Newman has become one of the brightest new stars on the UK pop landscape. With razor-sharp lyricism, bracing honesty and a keen ear for a sugary hook, she feels akin to 2025 Future of Music alumnus Lola Young in revealing her unfiltered self to us. You’d bet your house on her making this chance count. (WR)
Fiona-Lee
“I’ve been very influenced by the storytelling of folk music, but I have always wanted it to sound really big,” Fiona-Lee tells Rolling Stone UK, explaining the emotional charge that runs through her work. “I don’t want it to be background music; this is something you’re gonna fucking listen to!”
Like her heroes Sam Fender and Bruce Springsteen, the Yorkshire native’s songs read like intimate thoughts but are delivered with the gusto of someone who wants the whole world to hear. In common with the singers she reveres, Lee makes the personal universal, telling vital stories through the most intimate lens. “It’s all too common how every woman has been in a similar position with a man,” she spits on the title track from new EP Every Woman, over a menacing guitar line that reflects her anger. Later on in the song comes a ripping guitar solo, showing that she wants these messages to be delivered to arenas and stadiums.
“Are you threatened by me? / Cause I’ll knock you over when I get the chance, honey,” she sings to her own self-doubt on the song ‘Imposter’, sounding ironically like a singer with the world at her feet. (WR)
Guilt Trip
From Oasis to The Chemical Brothers, Manchester’s influential pop, dance and punk cultures have overshadowed a vibrant metal scene. It’s perhaps why Manchester metallic hardcore five-piece Guilt Trip have over the past decade cut their teeth on the wider UKHC underground scene. The band’s 2023 record, Severance, generated significant buzz before catching the attention of Roadrunner Records’ (Turnstile, Slipknot) head honcho Johnny Minardi, and finding a home for their upcoming third album among the bands that have shaped their sound.
Armour of Angels is set to be released on the iconic label in June, with the band describing it as “combining everything special about Severance with an added swing of heaviness and a more mature writing style”. Its lead single, ‘No Love Lost’, suggests that 2026 is the year that Manchester’s home-grown heavy riffs and guttural growls prevail. (Sophie Porter)
kwn
Part of kwn’s appeal lies in her emotional resonance – every desire, yearning, premonition and rumination is canvassed for the world to hear audaciously. A firm part of R&B’s global renaissance – proudly intersectional in its cohort of queer artists like Destin Conrad, Kehlani or Sasha Keable – kwn’s transparency colours this perspective, her cocksure, matter-of-fact approach courting a legion of fans, who often clamour to send her thirst traps.
However, it wasn’t always this way for the Walthamstow native, who got dropped from her first record deal in 2023. “I had so much self-doubt at the time,” she shares candidly. Regrouping, she worked with her father at a restaurant as a pastry chef, alongside her job at Amazon. “My confidence comes from wanting to tell the world that they could never do me like that again; I had to believe in myself and put it in the music.”
Early releases like EP episode wn’s ‘wn way or another’ hint at her poise, but kwn really comes into her own on her last EP, its apt moniker with all due respect asking for forgiveness not permission. Flirtatious, candid and seductive, with all due respect is seared with adornment and admiration, its smoky, sexually charged foundation adding desire back into the R&B canon.
Her artistic prowess lies in a childhood coloured by constant consumption of juggernaut R&B-artists, alongside her later studies at East London Arts and Music (ELAM). From Dru Hill to Beyoncé, kwn would listen in awe. She names Brandy’s ‘Put That on Everything’ as the “perfect” song to her. “Brandy is the vocal Bible. Everything from the crazy production to the insane vocals and background vocals and perfect ad libs – from top to bottom, it’s flawless.”
This optimism for R&B is anchored in kwn’s contemporary assessment of the landscape. She’s quick to assert that Elmeine, Destin Conrad, Isaia Huron, Ambré and, in particular, Maeta serve as tangible stewards for the genre’s future. “I don’t think people put enough respect on [Maeta]; her voice is incredible,” she explains.
As kwn gears up to release her yet-to-be-named new EP, she continues to shed her skin, with the hedonism of ‘touch myself’ adding refuge to the accountability that soars across ‘rather never love again’. “These songs are like a one-to-one conversation with myself; it’s like therapy to me. I’ve learned in the past year and a half that you need to feel, talk to myself more, talk to others more. I want to become the best version of me.” (Nicolas-Tyrell Scott)
dexter in the newsagent
Time Flies, the 2025 debut mixtape from dexter in the newsagent (born Charmaine Ayoku), is described by the south London singer as “a mixtape that highlights the things that carried me through my grief journey”. The intimate themes explored on this special record are echoed through its homespun production feel and bedroom-pop grounding (apt, given it was mostly recorded at her family home).
Most striking is the song ‘Care’, on which she sings: “If I hurt myself, would anybody care?” Seeing her producer cry at the lyric in the studio, she told Rolling Stone, “confirmed with me that there’s nothing wrong with people just hearing your thoughts as they are”. It solidified her mission to make Time Flies an unflinching look into grief and how it changes a person, with no punches pulled.
Musically, dexter in the newsagent pulls from the groundbreaking early work of PinkPantheress as well as Clairo and Imogen Heap, while a number of tracks on the mixtape also strip things back to just her affecting voice and plucked acoustic guitar. Her recent collaborators and tourmates also show the breadth of her ambition and appeal. She appeared on the track ‘dexter’s call’ from Jim Legxacy’s black british music mixtape and joined Blood Orange at his huge Alexandra Palace gig. Across genres, everyone wants a piece of this dextrous and entrancing new songwriter. (WR)
Madra Salach
‘The Man Who Seeks Pleasure’, the breakout song from Irish band Madra Salach, feels like it could have been plucked from any time in the last century or beyond. In an era where many modern bands are repurposing folk songs from eras past, the band themselves have constantly been asked where they found this haunting, powerful track. That they wrote it themselves in the 2020s is testament to its timelessness.
Of their place in this continuing lineage, the band’s frontman Paul Banks tells Rolling Stone UK: “The thing that I always stress is that none of us come from traditional Irish backgrounds. In Ireland, there can be real folk dynasties who play concertinas and fiddles from a really early age, but none of us come from that. My introduction was The Pogues when I was a teenager and that was my gateway drug.”
Banks possesses a monster of a voice, stretched to its thunderous limits in a way reminiscent of Neutral Milk Hotel’s reclusive genius Jeff Mangum (it’s little surprise that a cover of ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’ is a staple of Madra Salach live shows). Delivered in this way, the stories in these songs are given extra life and strength.
Also on their debut EP is a version of 60s track ‘Murphy Can Never Go Home’, written about Irish immigrants who had to leave home to make a life. With an ever-worsening housing crisis in Dublin and beyond, it’s a story more vital now than ever. “It certainly doesn’t have the bleak context of the early 20th century when it was linked to the famine, but there’s still people leaving Ireland who would rather stay,” says Banks. “There is a sadness in that.” Here is a band telling stories of both modern and ancient Ireland, each finding their vital place in 2026. (WR)
fakemink
A scatty, disconcerting gloom wraps itself around the music video for ‘LV Sandals’, fakemink’s explosive 2025 collaboration with fellow “UK Ug” pioneers EsDeeKid and Rico Ace. The trio forms a tight unit, highlighting the fact that they’ve risen and blown up together, pushing a gritty, rebellious mash-up of hip-hop, trap and synth exper-imentalism. The rough cohort they’re part of (which can no longer accurately be called “underground”) have become renowned for their refusal to play by long-established musical rules, instead using heavily distorted rhythm sections and putting out hyperactive, unpolished productions. These are often hallmarks of fakemink’s tracks, but it’s impossible to reduce his sound to those elements; when it comes to unbridled, boundary-less expression, he’s in a league of his own.
Tracks like ‘Fever’, ‘Fidelio’ and ‘blow me’ are structured around a fizzy, dense electronic sound, with trappy hi-hats and claps, and high-intensity moments that create a feeling that you’re deep in a packed club just as things are starting to kick off.
Meanwhile, other releases see him lean more into pop sensibilities, like the grinding bedroom pop-punk single ‘MAKKA’ (a collaboration with Ecco2k and Mechatok). Here, fakemink delivers the catchy line “I’m only 20, but it feels like plenty,” a lyric that neatly captures the nonchalant Gen-Z nihilism that acts as perhaps the defining thread between his releases. There’s an intoxicating throwaway vibe to his creations, which manage to disguise precise and thoughtful sonic innovation within a cloak of messiness, while also continuing a sense of vulnerability that helps his voice cut through the noise: “Where you at? Really need you now… I’m crazy and I’m nervous and I’m sweating and I’m blushing,” he vents on ‘Music and Me’, showing an emotional side that many of his UK Ug peers avoid.
As has been his way, debut album Terrified – a full-length continuation of January’s The Boy Who Cried Terrified EP – arrived in May with only a few weeks’ notice, showing again his unrelenting productivity.
Born in Essex, the 21-year-old started producing over a decade ago, after getting hold of a copy of FruityLoops. In the unique sonic blueprint he’s since developed – which incorporates piercing bass and kick sequences, twirling retro video-game synths, pitched-up vocals and an abundance of samples claimed from far and wide – there’s a touch of the teenage Dizzee Rascal, an earlier FruityLoops advocate. His confidence levels are similarly sky-high. “I actually was London’s saviour because I opened people’s eyes [to the UK Ug scene],” fakemink recently told Dazed. “Sometimes, I really feel like the Eminem of the UK underground, because I’m so much better than these, man, and they can’t face it.” (FGS)
Florence Road
Known affectionately to their fans as Flo Ro, Wicklow’s Florence Road have been on a meteoric rise for the past few years. In a huge leap from their humble beginnings rehearsing in vocalist/guitarist Lily Aron’s converted shed, lunchtime performances at the primary school where they met, and viral TikTok covers, the Irish four-piece have since brought their brand of 90s-tinged indie rock to huge stages in support of Olivia Rodrigo, as well as signing to major label Warner Records in 2024.
Since their formation, the band’s name has existed in the orbit of Rodrigo, The Cranberries, Wolf Alice, Beabadoobee and The Last Dinner Party, yet have made waves in their own right by distilling their teenage angst and familiar growing pains into anthemic choruses and energetic live shows. Now that its members are 20 years old, the four-piece hope to move away from being known primarily as a TikTok band.
The release of their debut EP Fall Back last year, featuring co-writing credits from producers like Dan Nigro (Chappell Roan) and Dan Wilson (Adele), signposted their transition into adulthood and their joint experience of the band’s rapid progression over the past few years. “The songs go through the joys and the anxiety and confusion that comes with becoming an adult,” Aron told Rolling Stone last June. Yet, the EP title is also representative of their roots and how they navigate these feelings in the best way they know how: together as friends.
Having achieved critically acclaimed releases early on this year, and with an impressive touring schedule which sees them take in the US, Finsbury Park with Wolf Alice, and a headline set at Camden’s KOKO, 2026 is certainly the year of Florence Road – one of pure, unadulterated girlhood. (SP)
Keo
Keo might be touted as the next great guitar band on many a pair of music industry lips, but you’ll have to head to a live show if you want to understand what this group – headed up by lead singer Finn Keogh – are truly about.
Here is a group where it’s less about musical perfection, and more about something earthy, scuzzy and incredibly real. The result is something that feels ostensibly like the highs of 90s guitar rock, but injected with a modernity which stops it from feeling like an off-putting pastiche of what went before.
“We are absolutely giving every show our all and treating it like the most important thing on Earth,” says Keogh on the morning they kick off their European tour in Berlin. Those shows will see fans treated to cuts from their debut EP I Lied, Amber, which presents songs that are laden with distortion and fuzz but packed with real depth once you dive beneath. Shades of Wunderhorse, Nirvana and the 90s alt-rock scene writ large can be found here, but Keogh’s magnetic presence helps to elevate the band and make it a triumph in its own right.
“It feels like we’re in the right place at the right time, which is funny, because when I moved to London and I started Keo, which is probably about three and a half years ago now, it was so frowned upon to be doing what we were doing,” adds Keogh.
“Singing melodically with electric guitars and bringing songs to the table, rather than arts-y stunts or political stunts. People thought it was very uncool to be doing anything melodic, but that’s the kind of thing I’ve always done.” In sticking to his guns, Keogh and his bandmates have landed upon a sound which could well play a major role in a glorious, guitar-filled landscape of British music in the very near future. (NR)
Girl in the Year Above
In the past 12 months, Cornish/Irish quintet Girl in the Year Above have gone from strength to strength, with a busy live schedule including a tour with The Kooks, and a standout cover of Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ on the soundtrack of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. The cover garnered high praise from Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja himself, who called it the most “sublime” version he’d ever heard. Not bad for someone who originally put music to one side “because I needed money,” laughs singer Jennifer Ball, who decided
instead to pick up the scissors and become a hairdresser.
Until recently, you could only hear the band’s music via snippets on social media, living room performances on YouTube, or at their live gigs – a place where they come alive. “I really love the idea of how old school that is,” Ball says of the band’s approach. “To go and do loads of shows and people can’t hear your music unless they come and see you.” It’s a romantic notion which sets Girl in the Year Above apart in a world of immediate and free access to music. “It kind of takes away that specialness of something, you know?”
The band’s sound and approach to their songs is a constant evolution and part of the reason why they’ve not fully committed anything to recording. On the occasions that they do, they favour live, organic productions over click tracks and perceived perfection. “Live music is transcendent and people should want to see that,” Ball affirms.
The band’s debut single ‘Mama, My Heart is Achin’’, released in March, is a powerful lament on the loss of Ball’s mother. Though it began life as something of a bitter response to people complaining about their own mothers or minor inconveniences in life, in true Girl in the Year Above fashion, the song’s characteristics changed with every live show and with every member, softening Ball’s view on grief.
“I’ve really had this whole turnaround in the last two years,” she says. “If I want her to be, she’s sat right there, which is so much more special than if someone is on Earth still.” Her newfound positivity is reflected in the record version of the song, making it less of a “big downer”.
Despite the band’s seemingly overnight success, the singer never expected this to happen. “I think it’s something I secretly wanted, but I wouldn’t admit it to myself,” she says. “Who doesn’t want to be a rock star?” With a busy year ahead and attracting over half a million listeners on two tracks in just a few months, 2026 is the year to live out that dream. (SP)
Cliffords
Cliffords may be only one EP into their career so far (2025’s Salt of the Lee), but they’re already becoming the latest in a long line of great rock bands who have emerged from the Emerald Isle. They deal in songs that call to mind their compatriots such as The Cranberries, but it’s also fair to say that the group have created alt-rock soundscapes which seem entirely their own. That’s certainly true of ‘Bittersweet’, the slow-burning anthem which first turned the world’s attention onto these Cork risers.
“All your hopeless lovers come and bow down at my door / They seek some sweet redemption, I cry out for more,” comes the cry of vocalist Iona Lynch. Lynch posits to Rolling Stone UK: “It feels like Irish bands – and even Cork bands – are having a great moment. We’re fuelling each other and everyone is so inspired by everyone else, which is class.” When the music is as good as this, long may that continue. (NR)
XO
XO – the group formed of Summer Askew, Shali Bordoni, Zoe Miller, Emmy Statham and Reanna Sujeewon – are the latest British girl group eyeing up world domination. And from what we’ve heard, we wouldn’t put it past them. ‘Real Friends’, which arrived last year, is a Charli XCX-penned paean to female friendships, while their latest release ‘Hotline’ is an all-out banger.
There are big tunes, but also a sense of empowerment too. “What we really want to get across is that idea of being very confident within yourself,” says Reanna to Rolling Stone UK. “We’re all very different people but we’ve come together so easily and we have space for everyone.” An all-embracing mantra, then, which will no doubt come in handy when world domination beckons… (NR)
The Scratch
You need only look at the likes of Lankum, The Mary Wallopers and even FoM 26 alumni Madra Salach as just a few of the modern Irish musicians bringing trad and folk music to the fore once again, injecting it with their own unique sonic twist.
But none of them, it’s fair to say, are doing it quite like The Scratch. These native Dubliners take the lilting rhythms of Irish folk and inject it with heavy metal sensibilities, resulting in a sound that has to be heard and – in the case of their ferocious live shows – seen to be believed.
Their recent stand-out track, ‘Pull Like a Dog’, takes its name from a phrase coined by Irish rowing duo Gary and Paul O’Donovan at the Rio 2016 Olympics but feels like a mantra that could be true of the band too. By pushing forward and delivering something utterly unique, they’re fast becoming one of Ireland’s most electrifying bands. (NR)
Saint Harison
When Saint Harison released his EP Lost a Friend in 2023, the songs felt like diary entries set to velvet production, full of intimate spiralling and steeped in late-night honesty. It was a winning combination that won praise from stars including Elton John and booked gigs on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and the popular YouTube series COLORS, where his performance of the single ‘Ego Talkin’’ has more than 25 million Spotify streams.
Now, the pop/R&B singer is moving forward with a debut album that he hopes to release this year. “I can’t remember how old I was when I started writing Lost a Friend,” he says. “I was a baby compared to now. The new stuff to come feels much more like eyes wide open and feels a little less like ‘poor me.’ It feels a little more like, ‘Aww, poor you.’”
In the meantime, the Southampton-born singer is getting ready to release a new EP, Ghosted, on 29 May. The EP’s title track serves as an emotional anchor, carrying that same sensitivity and depth fans of his earlier music responded to, but with a different posture.
Though sadness remains a thread throughout Harison’s music, so does self- awareness. Ghosted is nightcap music where you recognise the difference between asking why and deciding what you’ll no longer tolerate. When Harison croons words like “I love when that whiskey be talking,” on the track ‘Daffodil’, you can feel the empowered spirit. “Ghosted is sad,” he says. “As you age, you sort of realise that dating is not a fun game. It’s like, either you’re gonna marry me or go away, because I don’t have time. It’s very grown, still
very raw, and honest.”
Part of Harison’s magnetism is his restraint. There’s a distinctly British emotional register – humour as deflection and understatement as armour – even as his career continues to grow. Harison says his loved ones keep him grounded, while “life should be fun” is his mantra inside and outside of music.”
From Los Angeles studios to global streaming audiences, Harison is moving through larger rooms faster than ever. But if anything, he’s more interested in tightening the lens through the small humiliations, the private revelations, and the conversations you replay at 2am.
When he talks about his songs, Harison often sounds like someone editing himself in real time – choosing which illusions to drop, which instincts to trust, and which uncompromising truths to share. “I just hope that if someone needs to hear one of my songs, it finds them,” he adds. (Gabrielle Nicole Pharms)
Chalk
Back in March 2024, Belfast’s Chalk told Rolling Stone UK how they’ve “always been the kind of band to think a year or two ahead”. As if right on schedule, the experimental duo find themselves on our Future of Music list for 2026.
While the rest of us were learning to bake, getting fit, or [insert whichever random hobby you picked up here] during the Covid-19 lockdowns, Chalk were blending their love of noise rock with industrial electronic music. As restrictions lifted, they took the project out onto the live circuit, firmly cementing themselves as a unique and exciting prospect in the UK and Irish music scene.
The band’s Conditions trilogy of EPs tracked their oscillation between dance and wiry guitar music, leading to full-length album Crystalpunk. We described its sprawling sonic landscape as “reflecting the fractured nature of their city, but the intensity and strength that lies at its heart”.
Their home, Belfast, has long been their inspiration. Conflict, shared trauma and the exploration of complex identities combine with the influence of the city’s booming dance scene, birthing tracks like ‘Béal Feirste’. The eight-minute album peak captures this delicate ecosystem and underscores the band’s focus on unity.
On stage, Chalk demonstrate the power their genre-fluidity has to open up the pit with the best of bands, like tour buddies Fontaines DC or IDLES, while harnessing the non-stop catharsis of a DJ set. It’s a masterful command of balance between melody and raw intensity.
Two years ago, the band’s multi-instrumentalist Benedict Goddard told us that they weren’t “big enough to be pigeonholed yet”; they were just happy that people were listening to them. Now, here they are bigger and better than ever and even further from categorisation. (SP)
Alessi Rose
Dua Lipa, Tate McRae and Lorde are just a few of the names that Alessi Rose has shared the stage with, and it was being on stage in support of Dua at Wembley Stadium that cemented this Derby-born pop star’s ambition.
“I want to be a pop superstar,” she told Rolling Stone UK in 2025, with unflinching honesty. “I love Madonna. I love Britney, Gwen Stefani. That’s what I’ve always wanted. I want the drama. Being on tour with Dua, she has it all. She has the stage presence; she has the amazing songs. She has the hard-working drive that I’ve always wanted to have. I’ve had a taste of what I would love to have in my future. It’s all very, very motivating for me.”
Beginning her musical journey by making music in her bedroom on “a cracked version of Logic Pro,” Rose always had stadiums and hit singles in her mind even when operating in the humblest of environments. It gives her music, like the hugely catchy EP Voyeur, a drive that’s brilliant and bold.
Of her future, she says: “A lot of the lyrics sit in an area of discomfort and are not necessarily the lyrics you would expect from a pop song. With the music I’m making now, I’m wanting to push it again and cement it as pop, but it’s pushing what pop can be.” It’s a striking statement of intent from a pop star shooting for the big leagues. (WR)
Erin LeCount
Over the past year, Essex-raised singer, songwriter and self-producer Erin LeCount has built a loyal online fanbase after exploding beyond the British alt-pop scene with 2025’s viral single ‘Silver Spoon’. She’s recently completed her first headline tour in the USA, which was so in demand the singer-songwriter had to add extra dates; her third EP, the haunting baroque-pop PAREIDOLIA, was released just this February and has already racked up millions of Spotify streams.
This leap from a bedroom alt-pop musician to a bona fide touring artist is a trajectory that awes LeCount but doesn’t unsettle her. “I’m really grateful for all those years of not seeing many tangible big results,” she says. “I really disassociated from numbers and streams. I think the only time it feels really real is when I’m in front of people. That’s when I go, ‘Holy shit. This is different to when I was working in a shop a year ago.’”
LeCount may feel like the oldest 23-year-old in the world, but her internet-born story is typical of her generation. At the age of 17, when her school friends were preparing for university, “I got into making things on GarageBand [during the] Covid [period],” she says. “And started writing songs and sharing them during Covid, and that was what led me to production.”
Six years and a sold-out tour later, LeCount is balancing the landscape she started in with the world opening up beyond it. She’s currently “in the throes” of writing her first album, splitting her time between London and New York. “It’s a very special place to be making an album,” she continues. “I’m between my garden shed and New York.” Like the electric dynamism of her spectral sound, it is “two worlds apart but blending”. (Bea Isaacson)
Taken from the June/July issue of Rolling Stone UK. Buy your copy here.
Keep up to date with all our Future of Music content for 2026 here.