UP & COMING ASIAN ARTISTS | 100K AND BELOW
BY BRENESSA ROACH | FEBRUARY 21 2023
In today’s article, I am going to share 10 up & coming Asian artists that I have come across and really enjoy their music. I think every artist in this article has a lot of potential to rise and grow their fanbases.
You will definitely be getting a lot more articles like these because there are just so many talented Asian artists to share with the world. You can find a playlist with all my favourite songs by each artist at the end of this article, and please make sure to follow and support them if you like their music!
XENZU is a Chinese singer, songwriter and rapper. She moved to the USA when she was a young girl. She started releasing music to digital streaming platforms in August 2018 with the single “Siren”. Her music style is a blend of various genres such as; hip-hop, rap, pop and electronic music. Her debut EP Burn Book & Glow Up was released on January 7, 2022 and it’s the perfect example of the various styles of songs XENZU can make. My personal favourite song on the EP is “Burn Book”.
In September 2022, XENZU was the opening act in Houston, Atlanta and Brooklyn for JUNNY’s North American BLANC tour. Although I didn’t attend those shows, the JUNNY tour is how I discovered her because I looked up all the opening acts across North America. She currently has just over 13K monthly listeners after the release of her single “Jelly” which came out in December 2022. XENZU has a really cool and unique style and I think she has so much potential to grow her listeners and fanbase. I am very excited to see how she grows in the future.
Listen to “Burn Book” by XENZU on Spotify:
Check out XENZU Instagram: @xenzuwang
SeoulFly is a Chicago based, Korean-American duo consisting of Jonathan Lee and TJ Byun. They are currently affiliated with EXPOSITION and they have around 20.8K monthly listeners. Their musical style varies from Hyperpop, Pop, Hip-Hop and more. They released their first single album SF Summer in July 2019. The single album consists of two songs; “Waste of Time” and “City Girl Summer”. Out of every single SeoulFly song, my favourite so far is “Waste of Time”. Additionally, I want to say that their duo name is so cool.
I listened to SeoulFly for the first time a little over a week ago when TJ followed me and since then, I’ve had their songs on repeat. They are so cool and in fact, they are performing tomorrow (Wednesday, February 22) in Chicago as the opening act for JUNNY’s US BLANC Tour. This is huge for them and I can’t wait to see how they grow in the near future.
Listen to “Waste of Time” by SeoulFly on Spotify:
Check out SeoulFly on Instagram: @seoulflymusic
tanny ng is a Vietnamese singer-songwriter currently based in Boston, where he goes to college. He is also an artist who is affiliated with EXPOSITION. tanny released his first single “ambivalence” on December 9, 2021. He released his debut album is it 2 a.m at your place? in July 2022. Followed by the release of his second album amber’s playlist on December 17, 2022.
Earlier this month, tanny released a single album titled somebody loves you which consists of two songs; “somebody loves you” and “let me go”. I also had the chance to listen to a demo of tanny’s new song from his upcoming EP “glad you came, i’m sorry” which is to be released in April, so follow tanny and stay up to date for details on the EP! Listening to tanny’s new singles from this month and the demo, I really like the new sound he is going for compared to his older stuff. His voice is beautiful and I think that his 4K monthly listeners will definitely go up as more music comes out and I can’t wait to see his growth.
Listen to “somebody loves you” by tanny ng on Spotify:
Check out tanny ng on Instagram: @_tannyng_
OSA is a Taiwanese-Canadian singer, songwriter and music producer from Vancouver, Canada. Prior to entering the music scene, he actually was a visual artist, winning many awards in the North American art industry. Additionally, he has a few educational short films with over 100K views (Source: Spotify Profile). I recently came across his music because of the song “Steps” which was released in September 2018. He mainly creates R&B type of songs and sings in mainly Mandarin. He released his first single “Lady” in July 2018, which was a collaboration with Esydia.
My favourite song of his is titled “一種習慣” which I believe translates to “habit”. This song was released in September 2022. His voice is so calming and despite not understanding what the exact words are, I absolutely love this song. He currently has around 9K monthly listeners so I can’t wait to see how that number grows.
Listen to “一種習慣” by OSA on Spotify:
Check out OSA on Instagram: @osa_apac
nel is a singer, songwriter from Washington, USA. He started posting music to digital streaming platforms in July 2021 with the release of “believe”. His music is generally in the R&B genre but, he definitely mixes different genres as well. I love his song “circles” which was released in April 2022. It has a slight nu-funk style to it because of the bass but, it’s more of an R&B song with elements of electronic music. From the production style to his voice, I really love this song a lot. It kind of gives me JUNNY vibes.
nel ended 2022 with the release of his single “Elevator Buttons” which is a collaboration with Kymori. nel currently has around 10.5K monthly listeners so I hope to see him grow when he releases new music.
Listen to “circles” by nel on Spotify:
Check out nel on Instagram: @nelocana
SmoovLee is a singer-songwriter from the USA who currently has around 71.7K monthly listeners. He started posting music to digital streaming platforms in February 2022 with the release of his single “Misdirection” which is a collaboration with Rocco. His most popular song of 1.2 million streams is titled “i can’t say by no more” and it was released on August 26th, 2022. This song is also the song that I liked the most out of all his music.
Listen to “i can’t say by no more” by SmoovLee on Spotify:
Check out SmoovLee on Instagram: @smoov_lee
donny daydream is a singer-songwriter with about 12K monthly listeners. He was born in Hong Kong and moved to California as a kid. He is now based in LA, USA. He released his first single album sweet dreams on October 15, 2021. The album consists of two songs; “rush” and “oowee”, which is the song I discovered him by.
In May 2022, he released an EP titled for what you did, which was a collaboration EP with Bachyard Ghost. I really love donny daydream’s vibes. Most of his music is in the indie R&B genre but, he also has some hip hop songs. In November 8, 2022 he released a single album titled 1200PM which features 3 songs; “1200PM”, “kiss goodbye” and “bb blue”. These three songs are my absolute favourites, with “1200PM” being my top song. These songs have a very similar vibe to keshi, so if you like keshi, check out donny day dream.
Listen to “1200PM” by donny daydream on Spotify:
Check out donny daydream on Instagram: @donny.daydream
F.N is a Chinese-Canadian singer, songwriter and producer. He is from Toronto, Canada and is currently based in LA. His genre is a mix of indie-pop, R&B and bedroom pop. He currently has around 49K monthly listeners. His first song “Reverie” was released in July 2019. Since then, his vocals have grown a lot and his voice is a lot more confident in his newer music. The song of his that I enjoyed the most is from July 2022 and is titled “Make Me Fall in Love”. His latest release “Must Be Nice” is from October 2022 so, I can’t wait to hear what he will release this year (if he does).
Listen to “Make Me Fall in Love” by F.N on Spotify:
Check out F.N on Instagram: @musicbyfn
Aaron Peter is a bedroom-pop/indie-rock singer-songwriter. I don’t know much information about him but he has around 300 monthly listeners and is super underrated. He posted his first single “Jealousy” in May 2020. His most popular song of 8.1K streams is “Flaws” which was released on November 5, 2021. This is the song I discovered him with and I really like the lyrics and the production of the song. This song has a very D.I.Y/indie-rock sound and it really suits his vocal style. His last release was in September 2022 with the release of his debut EP bedroom demos. I really like Aaron’s sound so, I hope he posts more songs in the future and I hope he grows more listeners.
Listen to “Flaws” by Aaron Peter on Spotify:
Check out Aaron Peter on Instagram: @aaronn.808
ryan micah is a indie-pop/R&B singer. I also don’t know much about him. He only has about 13.3K monthly listeners but that is pretty good considering he only has one song out. He released “moreofyou” on September 30th, 2022 and the song currently has over 80K streams. On his Instagram, he has a video where he describes this song as keshi and LANY writing a song on a Drake beat and I think that is literally an accurate description of this song. Hopefully ryan micah will create and put out more music this year because he definitely is super talented and has the potential to grow.|
Listen to “moreofyou” by ryan micah on Spotify:
Check out ryan micah on Instagram: @ryan_k1m_
You can find all 10 songs mentioned in this article on our Spotify playlist below:
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