10 Under 10k
by Lila Diamond
In the last decade, as social media has become nearly inseparable from our tangible lives, musicians have been forced to change their once only-audible form of expression to fit into a multifaceted, audiovisual wild west. Now, your music is only as good as the grid of pictures that string below your name, in an effort to define your entire brand entity from your favorite dog breed to your weird obsession with Sanrio characters. Or is it? In an effort to shed light on the music rather than the grid, here are my ten favorite artists with less than 10,000 instagram followers (in no particular order).
1. Viji (9,317) @vijiwater
Viji, or Vanilla Jenner, is an Austrian-Brazilian alt pop artist based in London. After releasing EPs, Are You In My Head and Suck It, in 2020 and 2021, Viji released her hard hitting debut album So Vanilla in October of 2023, and a following deluxe version later in July. Sure, it's on alternative- grunge pop, but it's oh so artful and fun. “And I want you all to love me/ I wanna sing karaoke” she insists on her hectic hit Karaoke. In her gritty electric guitars lie the energy, anxiety and vitality of a teenager in the 2000s plotting to skip class. Viji is unbothered and unapologetic, she's herself and she's so vanilla.
Best tracks:
Sedative
Ambien
Sundress in Pink
2. urika’s bedroom (4,412) @urikasbedroom
The electro shoegaze brainchild of LA’s Tchad Cousins or urika’s bedroom sounds like how my ADHD feels, constantly buzzing, moving, building and deconstructing. His debut album, Big Smile, Black Mire, released in November, is unruly and yet somehow still intimate. After his release, he toured with Chanel Beads, bringing his album on the road. With a backbone of granular synthesis and dark guitar pedal feedback, Black Smile, Black Mire, often starts and ends with what sounds like a mix of tv static and video game effects. “I put my fears away, what will that take away” he sings, opening the album in his song *66. His voice is soft against the rough soundscape, somehow oozing with LA. In an interview for Belong Media, he asks himself “What kind of sound would Nirvana have made if Kurt Cobain had a MacBook Pro?” expertly defining his vision. At some points, it's just noise. I like those points the most.
Best tracks:
XTC
Metalhead
Century Love
3. Mali Velasquez (4,851) @malivelasquez
Amalia "Mali" Velasquez is an indie folk singer who absolutely crushed me with her debut album I’m Green in 2023. The Texan, now based in Nashville, bares her heart while delivering deep cuts with only her voice, a few guitars, bare drums and an occasional shaker. In her songs, she grapples with loss, grief, self indulgence and self acceptance. “And I know you're delicate / But so am I” she sings on Medicine, killing us. With help from her producer Josef Khun, she is raw and unpolished in the most beautiful way. Her music is an intimate expose on her inner, most fragile psyche.
Best tracks:
Bobby
Turn Red
Horse Trough
4. SEES000000 (7,909) @sees000000
Not everyone can say that their younger brother is cool. Mine however, put me onto SEES00000. The inconspicuous electronic artist who released his debut album, If I Promise To Miss You, Will You Go Away, this May, raised eyebrows when it was announced that he would be touring with Mk.gee (the current golden child of alternative music, if you know you know). While there is little known about him, his album dabbles in house, techno, and drum and bass; he is a DJ but not quite. His elusiveness is further emphasized by his album cover that looks like an iPhone picture taken at a checkout line in CVS. His irrelevance is a tactic, he is both everyone and no one. He’s doing it on purpose. Even after twenty minutes of scavenging the internet, I still don't know his real name.
Best tracks:
Ral2222
Walkout
Chs
5. June McDoom (9,780) @junemcdoom
If Alyssa McDoom aka June McDoom’s music was going to be a soundtrack to a movie, the only suitable idea would be an A24 take on Alice in Wonderland meets Euphoria. Her music, obviously wonderful and euphoric, is bursting with grace and poise through string arrangements, harps, guitars, tambourines, and tape hiss; She sounds like lullabies and fairies and bedtime stories and golden calligraphy and summer rain and butterfly wings and wooden floors.In a self composed bio, she mentions her roots in South Florida, as well as her influences growing up in a Jamaican household, and moving to New York to study jazz. McDoom maintains a magical level of cinematic grandeur while still sounding as if it were recorded in a tree house. Maybe that's just what she wants us to believe.
Emerald River Dance
On My Way
The City
6. Louis Prince (5,450) @_louisprince
Louis Prince, the pseudonym for LA gone Nashville artist Jake McMullen, is a plethora of things. With a falsetto similar to Bon Iver and lushly layered beats and synthesizers, his music is a musical dreamscape. His first album, Thirteen, which was produced alongside Micah Tawlks, grapples with self discovery throughout drum loops, synths, acoustic guitars and pianos. Flounder, the most recent project from 2022, in an experimental enigma. While Ice Cream Island starts with stunningly crafted piano arrangements, it ends with an auto tuned robotic voice. The fun and punchy alt pop song, Is It Dark Where You Are, starts with a 1975 inspired drum loop, but ends in downtempo jazz and strings. It's a vision, and it's not hard to hear there's something special there.
Best tracks:
Afterward
Indica Bike Ride
Is It Dark Where You Are?
7. Clinic Stars (1,183) @clinic_stars
The lush and spacious pop music of duo Giovanna Lenski and Christian Molik was born in Detroit, Michigan. Their band, Clinic Stars, is a woozy hallucination of pop, shoegaze, and alt rock, wrapped up with Lenski’s hauntingly quiet vocals and layers of reverbed guitars and synths. Their album, Only Hinting, which was released last month, was made in a basement (but no one is complaining). They maintain intimacy while still feeling cinematic. They feel grounded while creating a soundtrack to a fever dream. They feel so far removed, yet so vital to their sound. Somehow, they are doing all the right things.
Best Tracks:
Kissing Through The Veil
Remain
Only HInting
8. Moses Ideka (3,270) @mosesideka
The London based artist Moses Ideka sings like a God. While only releasing music in the past year, Ideka has defined himself as an R&B visionary, gaining traction and an inevitable sampling (on the wolfacejoeyy song, don’t be dishonest). His first two releases, Cast Out and Won’t Be Waiting, sonically showcase a mixture of Sampha style vocals over Kenny Beats inspired drum loops. (The story goes that he met his co producer, Dillon van Rensburg, aka not dvr, on a Kenny Beats discord channel). His latest release from July, a four song dance EP, Working Order, features his signature smooth vocals along four on the floor bass. With only four instagram posts, Moses Ideka has created a whole world. His artistry trumps elusivity. He doesn't need the coverage. He has everything he needs.
Best Tracks:
Over It
Cast Out
Won't Be Waiting
9. Ada Lea (7,196) @adaleamusic
The Montreal based singer songwriter Alexandra Levy aka Ada Lea delivers truthful and heartfelt indie folk through her own matter of fact lens. She has released three projects since 2019, all delivering the magic and mystic of her songwriting through guitars and drum loops. “I’m driving us down to New York / I’m so afraid you'll get bored” she coos on her song i-95 with the honest brutalism, something we've all felt. “Damn the night, damn the party / Damn the song that's spinning” she whines on Damn. Levy has a simple way of telling it how it is: compassionate and raw.
Best Tracks:
damn
i-95
partner
10. Ghost Orchard (2,771) @ghostorchard
The lo-fi experimental bedroom pop brainchild of Sam Hall is everything I ever want to listen to. Based in Michigan, Hall released his debut album, Poppy, in 2015 and has released three albums since, most recently rainbow music in 2022, and a remix album Re: Rainbow Music last year. The album, featuring minimalist drum machine sounds, soft synths and dark, forward vocals, is the best kind of ambient pop. The kind of ambient pop that someone puts on, you notice, and actually ask what you're listening to.
Best tracks:
rest
bruise
comfort (rainbow)2