BEHIND THE BEAT’S HIDDEN GEMS PT. 1
BY BRENESSA ROACH | MAY 25, 2024
Welcome to our first blog in our “Behind The Beat’s Hidden Gems” series. This is a blog series where we will share a few artists that we recently discovered, loved and want to share so they receive more love and streams.
May was an incredible month because we discovered so many amazing artists that we cannot wait to follow on their musical journey and see their growth.
David Alexander is an independent pop singer from Denver, Colorado with 35K monthly listeners on Spotify. He released his first single “If I Were You” on September 23rd followed by “Heartbeat” on December 9th. This is his most popular song with over 1.3 million streams on Spotify. His only release in 2021 was in July for the single “Sore Loser”. In August 2022, he released “Her” followed by “Dancing Alone” in November. “Dancing Alone” is his second most popular song with 1.2 million streams.
On June 2nd, 2023, he released “Worst Case” which was his only single released for that year. On March 29th, 2024, he released “Loved By You” which is the song that we discovered him by this month. We love this song so much and it got us listening to more of David’s music. He just released the single “Poetic” on May 17th as well.
We are so happy that we discovered David Alexander and cannot wait to hear more of his music and watch his growth.
Listen to “Loved By You” by David Alexander on Spotify:
Check out David Alexander on Instagram: @davidalexandersongs
Kim Hyunchang is a South Korean singer and songwriter under the label Sound Nova. He currently has around 37.4K monthly listeners on Spotify. He made his debut on November 21st, 2018 with the single “Joshua”. In 2019, he released the singles; “00” and “Drowning” on January 21st followed by “Outland” on June 7th, 2019.
On September 21st, 2020, Kim Hyunchang released his debut EP My Blue has always been Shattered by the Night which includes the song “Nothing but Morning”. This is his most popular song with over 1.1 million streams on Spotify alone. He started 2021 off with the release of “Winter Ache” in May. On November 29th, 2021, he released the double single EP Shine behind the curtain which included the singles “Flower Garden” and “Curtain”. Both of these songs were pre-release tracks for his second EP long to be the garden which came out on July 15th, 2022. He ended 2022 off with the release of the single “afternoon”. In 2023, Kim Hyunchang only released two demo songs; “dear heart” and “Lullaby”.
His latest release is from May 2nd, 2024 with his debut album *I Live and Mourn, Thus Resketch You.* This album is how we discovered him this month thanks to his song being featured in Spotify’s New Music K-Pop playlist. We absolutely love this album because it has such a warm, sweet and indie-pop/rock vibe to it. If you’re a fan of Wave To Earth’s style of music, you would definitely like Kim Hyunchang as well. This whole album is a no-skip, but if we had to choose a favourite song, it would be “a Poem Laid Infront of You”.
Listen to “a Poem Laid Infront of You” by Kim Hyunchang on Spotify:
Check out Kim Hyunchang on Instagram: @resketch_
Jud Flores is a pop fusion artist from Hong Kong with around 5.4K monthly listeners on Spotify. He released his first single “Rainbow” on August 27th, 2018. His next releases were in 2020 for the singles; “dangerous” in April and “No Drama” in May. Both singles were pre-release tracks for his debut album, *Cosmic Dreams,* which was released on June 4, 2020. Following his debut album, he released the following singles in 2020; “Dancin Alone” in July, “What’s Mine” in August, “dead to me” in October and “Naughty” in November. He started 2021 off with the release of the single “Stay Awake” on January 22nd followed by the release of his EP the acoustics on February 4th. He released quite a few singles throughout 2021 and also released his second album let you in on April 28th. We discovered Jud because of the song “goodbye” on this album which was featured in our Spotify Daylist playlist.
Jud Flores has been consistently releasing songs since his debut and has over 15 songs that all vary in sounds and genres. His latest release “your only” is from March 1st, 2024. We cannot wait to hear what else he will release this year.
Listen to “goodbye” by Jud Flores on Spotify:
Check out Jud Flores on Instagram: @judddflores
Ezra is a hyper-pop artist who mixes other genres into his music and currently has 108K monthly listeners on Spotify. He is originally from New York and currently based in Los Angeles. He debuted on July 31st, 2020 with the single “בשבילך” (Hebrew for “For You”) followed by the release of the single “Secrets” on December 16th, 2020. In 2021, he released one single “It’s Okay”. He started 2022 off with the release of “All Your Friends Hate Me” on January 21st followed by “Riley” on March 11th which was in collaboration with sace6. He also released “set me free (december)” in June, “my fault” with hamilton in August and “there’s never a next time” in October.
His first release of 2023 was for the single “another sad song” with Jomie which came out on May 5th. On June 9th, he collaborated with Promoting Sounds for the single “can’t let my guard down” which is his most popular song with almost 3 million Spotify streams. His last release of the year was on October 27th for the single “backup plan”.
In 2024, he released the single “tightrope” on January 26th followed by the release of “better on mute” in March. Both of these singles were pre-release tracks for his debut EP appreciate the small things which came out on April 5th. We got recommended the song “appreciate the small things” by a Behind The Beat follower and we loved the song so much.
Listen to “appreciate the small things” by Ezra on Spotify:
Check out Ezra on Instagram: @whereisezra
Minh is a Lo-Fi, Pop, Hip-Hop and R&B singer from Houston, Texas with around 40.7K monthly listeners on Spotify. He made his debut on December 3rd, 2021 with the single “keep in touch”. His next single “winter nights” came out on January 7th, 2022. On April 22nd, 2022, Minh released his debut EP *butterfly.* He also released two more singles in 2022; “waste our time” in September and “713” in December.
On April 14th, 2023, he released his first single of the year titled “devil’s daughter”. Followed by that release, he collaborated with ben chow in June for the single “ur mine”. We discovered Minh because of ben chow. Minh released the single “aphrodite” on June 30th. This is one of his most popular song with 216K streams on Spotify.
So far in 2024, Minh released one single “hypnotized” on January 12th. This is his most streamed song with almost 360K streams on Spotify and also our favourite song yet. We hope Minh will release some more songs this year.
Listen to “hypnotized” by Minh on Spotify:
Check out Minh on Instagram: @minh_wav
Mak Ro is a Filipino-American duo based in Memphis, Tennessee. Mak Ro consists of Eric Makapugay and Kris Ruaro. Their music is a blend of Pop, R&B, Rock, Hip-Hop and a few more genres. They currently have around 5K monthly listeners on Spotify. They made their debut on March 4th, 2019 with the single “midnight”, followed by the single “Done” in December. In March 2020, they released the single “Game”. Their debut EP Topanga came out on August 28th, 2020 and consists of four songs. In 2021, they released one single in August titled “One”.
In 2022, they started releasing a song a month starting with “Self Control” in January and followed by; “Backroom” in February, “Paint” in March, “Dejavu” in April and “Diary” in May. There was no June release, but they released “Sip” in July. This was the song we discovered them by recently as we had an Instagram advertisement of them come up on our feed.
In 2023, they released “Good” in January, followed by “Boulevardier” in February. “Boulevardier” is their most popular song with almost 50K streams on Spotify. Their latest release “Just We” with Jordan Occasionally is from July 21st, 2023.
So far for 2024, Mak Ro have not released any music, but we hope they will in the near future. We love their sound and are excited to hear more.
Listen to “Sip” by Mak Ro on Spotify:
Check out Mak Ro on Instagram: @makromusicofficial
Check out our “HIDDEN GEMS” playlist on Spotify:
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