Luna Staff Picks: 2025 Artists to watch
2025 artists to watch
2025 artists to watch
☆ BY THE LUNA COLLECTIVE STAFF ☆
THE MUSIC WORLD IS CONSTANTLY EVOLVING and 2025 is shaping up to be an exciting year for emerging talent. Prepare to be captivated by some rising stars. Our curated selection of artists are pushing boundaries, captivating audiences, and poised to make a significant impact on the music scene.
Get ready to discover Saya Gray, marsfade, Doechii, Rachel Chinouriri, Been Stellar, Alice Phoebe Lou, and Dummy. These rising stars are already making waves with their unique voices and captivating performances. Whether it's through infectious melodies, raw emotion, or innovative soundscapes, these artists are poised to leave an indelible mark on the music scene.
Prepare to be captivated by their artistry, and get ready to hear their names echoing across your playlists throughout the year.
Saya Gray
Singer, songwriter, bassist and producer Saya Gray is utterly boundless. Her work collages ethereal soundscapes, arrestingly delicate vocals, groovy bass lines and turbulent rhythm sections.
Gray, like her compositions, is genre-defying. She was born into music – her dad was a jazz trumpet player who played for the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Arethra Franklin and the Temptations, and her mom was a piano teacher with a strict classical background. She dropped out of high school to take night classes – a “authority issue,” in her words – and ended up with offers to hit the road touring when her bass cover of Michael Jackson’s “Ease on Down the Road” went viral in gospel circles on Instagram. But working for other artists felt too much like school. She honed her own voice when she moved to London, recording her debut 19 Masters mostly on Voice Memos while couch-surfing.
Be on the lookout for her first full-length album, SAYA, dropping on February 21, 2025 through Dirty Hit. She teased the release with “SHELL ( OF A MAN ),” a twangy acoustic layered with floaty lyrics that cut right through: “If you don’t like me now, you’re gonna hate me later.”
marsfade
By Isabel Dowell
Built on a foundation of lush synth pop multi-instrumentalist and producer, marsfade is an indie electronic artist from Grand Rapids, Michigan. With the release of her first EP, I Move the Stars for No One, since taking on the marsfade moniker, marsfade is in the midst of writing, recording, and planning the future of her career. Throughout her appearance, marsfade interlinks pieces of her life with inspirational media that drives her artistry. Her music doesn’t just ask you to listen. It invites you to feel and live through her emotions, hoping you’ll make them your own.
Set to release in 2025, I Move the Stars for No One is a collage of seven songs that follows the emotional chronicles of nearly four years of various hopeful, yet failed romances. The title of the EP starkly contrasts the lyrical themes found throughout the tracks, as if it is the lesson learned after experiencing all that led to and inspired these songs. Featuring themes such as fear of abandonment, feeling used for your body, anxious attachment, and earnestly wishing the best for your ex, this collection makes up the most personal and revealing work from marsfade yet. Straying slightly from her usual indie electronic sound to match the expanded emotional vulnerability, this EP features complex dynamics and a wider array of instrumentation, including live drums and guitars to pair with her signature synths and strings.
Doechii
By Carson Huffer
A multi-hyphenate in every sense of the term, TDE’s very own swamp princess Doechii has taken the world by storm in 2024. While Doechii has been on the rap scene for years, the release of her mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal has exploded into the cultural zeitgeist with a bold and brash fury. Equal parts hard-hitting and soft, Doechii’s lyricism and flow shined on this most recent record in an undeniably incredible way. Layering the success of her mixtape with the power of various major festival appearances (Camp Flog Gnaw, Gov Ball), recent viral media performances (NPR Tiny Desk, Steven Colbert), and co-signs from various artists such as SZA and Tyler, The Creator, 2024 was a smashing success for the rapper.
Rachel Chinouriri
By Syd Little
Rachel Chinouriri is everything that you could ask for in an up-and-coming indie darling. Singles “So My Darling” and “All I Ever Asked” went viral on Tiktok in 2022, propelling her into the limelight. Her debut album What A Devastating Turn of Events is an eclectic powerhouse, encapsulating everything from heart-wrenching ballads to crashing nineties-inspired guitars to danceable indie pop. Don’t be fooled by the more upbeat anthems — Rachel Chinouriri’s candid songwriting highlights experiences of heartbreak, mental health struggles, deaths in her family, and feeling like an outsider.
As a Black woman from the UK, Chinouriri is incredibly vocal about the space she’s carving out for herself in the music industry. While many would be quick to lump her under genres like R&B, soul, or jazz simply because of her race, Chinouriri is unabashedly indie. She’s formed close friendships with other Black indie artists such as Cat Stevens, who she collaborated with on recent single “Even.”
In March, Chinouriri will take the stage for some of her largest shows so far: opening for Sabrina Carpenter in Europe and the UK. Be prepared to watch her take 2025 by storm with her electrifying stage presence, melodious vocals, and one-of-a-kind artistry.
Been Stellar
By Aleah Antonio
I discovered Been Stellar through a press release their manager sent me before the band had released their first self-titled EP in 2022. I've been hooked ever since. The year the EP came out, I had a chance to see them open for Just Mustard in San Francisco. In my mind, the band was big - reflective of their sound, expansive and full of depth - despite the light crowd who came early to see them. During their opening sets, Been Stellar would perform what are now songs off of their debut album, Scream From New York, NY, that came out this summer - “Start Again” and “Sweet.” I loved their EP (singles “My Honesty” and “Manhattan Youth” played in my head on a loop) but these mysterious, unreleased songs were special. Been Stellar were special. Now that their debut is out, I can confidently say it's one of the best rock records I've heard this year.
New York is both a character and a theme in their lives as it splinters into vignettes that make up the record. On each song, they are honest about how little words can do when describing what the city of New York has done for them, professionally and personally. Driven by fresh post-punk melodies and heavy distortion, the music speaks for itself. New music is reportedly already in the works, and I can't wait to see what more they have to offer with what they've already proven themselves with.
Alice Phoebe Lou
By Sydney Tate
No stranger to an open heart, Alice Phoebe Lou shows no signs of slowing. Her penchant for yearning is familiar, lacing gut-wrenching sweetness with all-knowing truths of life and loving.
Lou released the new single “Better” hot off a North American fall tour with Clairo and plans for rest until her European tour starts in April 2025. Her work ethic spans wide, painting a determined picture of seven-plus years of releasing studio music in the broader public eye. From folk and indie twinged greetings on Orbit to an even brighter call out that we know from Shelter, Alice Phoebe Lou’s perspective acts as a warm embrace, best defined by a single word: tender.
Although heartache in human connection and self-exploration is universal, Alice Phoebe Lou paints a most endearing musical landscape, surely captivating romantics, adventurers, and recluses alike.
Dummy
By Sydney Tate
Immune to the sophomore slump, Dummy’s second studio album Free Energy proves true to its name — spunky, defiant, and spirited.
Dummy makes sense of a crumbling Anthropocene in ethereal double-timed sweeps of distortion and an occasional (but welcomed) detour to avant-garde jazz (seen in “Sudden Flutes”). 90s-driven sounds deliver faith, sculpting the promise of a light at the end of the tunnel. Their success is naturally coined in a live show setting with undeniable swaths of sound enamoring audiences across the West Coast, UK, and Europe to close out a charged year.
Fans of Dummy’s latest music can only be enthused by a look into Mandatory Enjoyment, a debut with no skips. Dummy has everything you’ve been needing to ring in the new year: droning melodies, brazenly angular turns, and unfounded hopefulness.
