BEHIND THE BEAT’S HIDDEN GEMS PT. 5
BY BRENESSA ROACH | OCTOBER 5, 2024
Welcome back to the fifth part in our series “HIDDEN GEMS” where we share all the amazing and emerging artists that we discovered recently. Last month we didn’t have a chance to write a HIDDEN GEMS article so, the six artists we will share in this post, we discovered last month in September. We hope you enjoy these artist recommendations.
Let’s get started…
Current Monthly Listeners: 133.6K
leoleo is a Norwegian indie-pop artist that made his debut on August 6th, 2021 with the single “shirt”, garnering attention from Bergensavisen, the second-largest newspaper in Bergen (Source: Spotify). Following his debut, he released the single “Everywhere I Go” in November, which was in collaboration with sofiie. He released one single in 2022 titled “over you” and it was featuring CSN. In 2023, he only released two songs; “around u” with sofiie on February 3rd and “holding me back” on August 25th.
So far for 2024, he released “where do i go” on June 7th, followed by “wildflower” on September 20th – which is his latest release. We discovered leoleo through Instagram ads.
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Current Monthly Listeners: 27.4K
Bailey Baum is an indie-pop singer from Dallas, Texas who made her debut on April 7th, 2017 with a cover of Elvis Presley’s song “Can’t Help Falling In Love” which has gained over 2.3 million streams since its release. Her next single “OMW” came out on April 14th and was a collaboration with Marcus Semaj. Following that release, she dropped the single “EZ” on October 27th – which was her last single of 2017.
She released “Change” in May, followed by “Call U Mine” in November. This is her third most popular song with over 1.3 million streams on Spotify. On May 31st, 2019, she released two singles; “Simple Feelings” which is her most popular single with 2.1 million streams and “I Noticed”.
In October 2020, she released the single “Over It” which was a pre-release track for her debut EP with the same title Over It which came out on July 31st, 2021. After the release of her EP, she released “Jaded” in August 2022, “Lonely Looking” in September and “Loose Laces” in October. Her first release of 2023 was on April 21st, for the single “Novo”. Followed by that single, she released “In Between” in October. This is the song that we discovered her by as it came up on our Spotify radio.
In March 2024, she released her first single of the year titled “Slide”, followed by “Easy To Find” in May. Her latest single “flowers and a smoothie” released on August 9th.
Current Monthly Listeners: 75.1K
16 is a Korean R&B singer and songwriter under AllBlue Records. He debuted in 2023 with the OST (original soundtrack) “Calling My Heart” for the Korean drama Unintentional Love Story. Following that single, he released “insomnia” on May 20th. This single was in collaboration with KURO and is his most popular song with over 1.3 million streams. In June 2023, 16 collaborated with hayawn for the single “six weeks”. He ended 2023 off in August with the single “Smell Like You” featuring Gyuna.
His first release of 2024 was in February with the single “Wish U”. This is the single that we discovered 16 by recently. It’s also his second most popular song with almost 750K streams. On May 21st, 2024, he released the single “Repeating on you” which was an OST for the Korean drama The Chairman is level 9. His latest single “2AM” is from June 21st, 2024 and it’s one of our favourite songs of his so far.
Current Monthly Listeners: 2.7K
Keylight is an R&B singer and songwriter from Korea who debuted on October 20th, 2017 with the single “Turn on Your Light”. Following his debut, he released “Perfumer” and “Zoom In” featuring 9 Yard on May 16th, 2018 and “Babysitter” on November 26th. “Babysitter” was a pre-release track for his debut EP Soundgraphy which came out on March 6th, 2019. He then released “Drunk” in October. He ended the year off with “Always” in December which was a pre-release track for his second EP Wherever We Are which released on August 11th, 2020. In November 2020, he released his third EP Hope You Sleep Well, followed by a few more singles in 2020.
He did not release anything in 2021 and came back on September 28th, 2022 with his fourth EP *Change,* followed by the single “Underrated” on November 2nd. In 2023, he released three singles; “Trust Me” in July, “Actually” in September and “Don’t Lie” in November.
His first release of 2024 was on January 31st, with the single “Can I come in?”. He then released “VIBE” in April and collaborated with Owen in June for the single “Don’t Waste”. His latest single “BOY” features VVON and came out on September 9th. This is the song we discovered him by through Instagram.
Current Monthly Listeners: 2K
Iris, also known by her artist name prettylittleiris is a South Korean-Canadian artist based in South Korea. On December 15th, 2017, she debuted under Astory Entertainment with the single “Me Too”, but left Astory on September 25th, 2020. She made her solo debut as prettylittleiris on December 31st, 2019 with the single “LOVE GAME”. One year later on December 15th, 2020, she released two singles “teddy” and “i’m your scary movie”. In 2021, she released two singles; “Lilies” on April 15th and “Manners” on October 28th and released on single in December 2022 titled “Antisocial”.
Her first release of 2023 was on January 9th for the single “Madly Into You”. Following that single, she released the mini EP bunny on December 13th, which included three singles; “fry my heart !!”, “Howl” and “() your bunny”. So far for 2024, she released “Flowergazing” on March 27th and “cherry-picking” on August 2nd – which is the song we discovered her by.
Current Monthly Listeners: 26.9K
Rebby Han, also known by her artist name REBBY is a singer and songwriter based in New Jersey and New York City. She made her debut on October 1st, 2021 with the single “love like before”. She didn’t release any music in 2022, but came back on March 20th, 2023 with the single “Pink + White” featuring Shaan Ramaprasad.
She started 2024 off with the single “sayonara” – which is her most popular single with 421K streams on Spotify. Following that single, she released “hard to say goodbye” on June 21st and “ride” with Thomas Ng on July 26th. All three of these singles were pre-release tracks for her debut EP everything will be okay which came out on September 6th, 2024. This EP is how we discovered her by. On October 4th, she released an extended version of the EP titled *note to self.* On October 11th, she was also included on Patrick Hizon’s album what a feeling. for the single “inside”.
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