It's a gamble trying to pick out the next big thing on the horizon. Sometimes you hit the nail on the head, sometimes a Byron Bay busker comes out of nowhere and conquers the world. Nevertheless, here are the artists we think are going to do big things this year.
CLYPSO
CLYPSO’s hyper-colour floor fillers were some of the most boppable tracks to come out of Sydney last year. Her debut EP Cameo dropped in January, mixing bumping synths, thick basslines and traditional touches like tabla and marimba together with smart, sharp production.
Her September single DYS (Defend Your Situation) took her trademark "troppo chilli flakes” sound up another notch. It’s irresistible from the opening trumpet blast and, at the time of writing, one of the 50 most-played tracks on triple j.
She wrapped 2019 by touring with Art Vs Science on their national run after supporting Channel Tres, Touch Sensitive, Peking Duk and performed at a stack of festivals through the year. Starting 2020, she’s playing Out Of Bounds Festival in January and Grampians Music Festival in February, with a brand new single Sidestep coming out the same month.
Cry Club
Two out of three Cry Club clips in 2019 featured Heather Riley swinging a sledgehammer around like a glitter-splashed John Henry (had his beef been less with industrialisation and more with homophobia and people who don’t respect consent). We can get behind those numbers.
The band opened last year by signing to Best & Fairest in January and released blistering noise-pop anthem DFTM on Valentine’s Day. They closed it as the most played artists on triple j Unearthed radio in 2019, because it’s not just Riley’s backswing that floors people.
We expect big things from the group in 2020 - starting with their first national headline tour for most recent single Robert Smith and a set at Big Gay Day in March.
DOOLIE
DOOLIE’s been kicking off the last few years. In 2018 she had a couple of barnstorming collabs with Paces and POOLCLVB and picked up spots at festivals like Splendour and Falls Festival, and 2019 was another steady grower for the young R&B/electronica singer-songwriter.
She signed to Etcetc Music in March, dropping GXNXVS co-write 2.20 on the label with Charlie Threads before she and Threads took it out on east coast dates. After releasing Attention, featuring China Roses, in August and No Game with XMPLA in September she was also picked up by 120 Publishing. She then guested on LO’99’s Stay High, reaching #1 on the ARIA Club Chart, and closed out the year with December single Slow Crawl.
With more dates and singles coming, and her first mixtape in the works, we’re guessing DOOLIE’s prepped to jump another level in 2019.
flowerkid
Is it too early to call flowerkid’s breakout? The 18-year-old seemed to come out of nowhere with Boy With The Winfields And The Wild Heart. It had been up on Spotify from 2018, along with his other track, Late Night Therapy, but when he uploaded it to triple j Unearthed in September he made one hell of an impression. He had one of the five most popular artist profiles of 2019 when the station did their end of year wrap three-and-a-bit months later.
In November flowerkid said his goal was to finish an EP and another couple of singles by New Year’s, so there’s a good chance more music’s not far off. A bit of luck, and maybe a shoutout from Sir Elton, and the kid’s laughing.
Genesis Owusu
Even outside of his genre bending, Genesis Owusu proved himself a versatile artist in 2019. From conceptual swat teams to playable music videos and his bent for “abrupt duality”, he seems like a guy who's tied to an ambitious aesthetic as much as a sound, and we’re excited to see where it leads him in 2020.
Over the last year he dropped two double A-side singles, four tracks with close to four-and-a-half million streams between them. He also took the first of the releases around the country on the Smiling With No Teeth tour in April and May, went to Europe for French festival This Is Not A Love Song, played Splendour In The Grass and supported Ruel’s Painkiller tour.
He kicked off the new year at Field Day, with eyes on bigger stages in 2020 and a live show to match. He’s also currently working on his debut album, due out around July.
Hannah Blackburn
Hannah Blackburn is still building herself up, but she’s quickly becoming a regular support go-to for the new generation of Australian songwriters, including artists like Angie McMahon, Carla Geneve and Emerson Snowe. She’s also about to start her first-ever tour - pretty much right this minute - travelling from Byron Bay to Adelaide over three weeks with Merpire and Forever Son as part of the Porch Sessions.
We don’t have any concrete information on what else Blackburn has planned for the year, but Did You Know and Tiny Car were two of our favourite songs of 2019 and we will pick up absolutely anything she puts down in 2020. Her voice is achingly beautiful and her songs so boldly vulnerable.
Jack Davies & The Bush Chooks
Jack Davies has a special knack for capturing the gentle restlessness of being young and a little lost and maybe in love, usually with a pretty specific focus on food.
Davies and his band The Bush Chooks' first single Vegemite Sandwich got enough attention to net them three WAM award nominations and Nannup Music Festival’s Emerging Artist Award in 2018, and they tightened the strings on their Australiana folk through 2019 with several singles and their debut EP Cleaning Dishes.
Davies had his own 'early Dylan goes electric' moment with heavier track Prime Minister in April - the searing indictment of Scomo proving more and more on the money as the year unfolded.
Davies only has a one-off show with The Waifs in February lined up for the year so far. Looking at his past events there was maybe five weeks total in 2019 that he and the Chooks didn’t play a gig, so it’s likely that will get an update once the holis wrap.
Johnny Hunter
There’s more than one way to build an audience. Like other recent upstarts Amyl & The Sniffers, Press Club and A Swayze & The Ghosts before them, Johnny Hunter are doing it from the stage; TikTok memes and Spotify playlists be damned. Their live show is post-punk mayhem in a mullet and mascara and word about JH ripples out further with every pub they leave in a sweat.
After signing to Break Even Records in 2018, 2019 saw the band join Michael Parisi MGMT division Right Hand Management. They played with The Raconteurs at Big Top Luna Park, went up and down the east coast on their own Ashamed run and supported Press Club’s massive second album tour. They also stopped at FOTSUN, BIGSOUND and Secret Garden (where their PA caught fire).
They’ve got a new single dropping early in the year and their first EP not far behind, with national tours lined up for both, as well as plans to write their debut album.
Lastlings
The brother-sister duo are well and truly out of the bag here in Aus but 2020 feels like the year they hit some big strides globally.
They said in a Facebook post last January that their debut album was coming in 2019 but it has been a busy 12 months for pair. After signing to RÜFÜS DU SOL’s label Rose Avenue Records in late 2018, Lastlings supported them on their massive national Solace tour in February and then joined them for two sets of North American dates. In between, they had their own tour, debuted at Coachella and played just about every Australian festival from Splendour to Beyond The Valley.
That album is definitely coming in 2020 though, and with so much international exposure lately we don’t feel too crazy saying it should make some waves overseas. Plus, RÜFÜS DU SOL are touring the US again in February and they haven’t announced supports yet. It’s total conjecture on our part but quelle surprise if their dreamy electronic proteges show up on the ticket.
Obscura Hail
Swear Jar is such cracking tune with such a sweetly emo message. Things got you down? Swear it out. Holler 'hot-fuck-damn' until your vision closes in. It helps.
In 2019 Obscura Hail went from strength to strength, signing to management label Sunset Pig (A Swayze & The Ghosts, Hobson's Bay Coast Guard) in January and Dot Dash/Remote Control Records in August. They played By The Meadow, Changes Summit and BIGSOUND, supported acts like Bad//Dreems and Soaked Oats, and sold out three single launch shows in their adopted Melbourne home. They got a lot of love on the airwaves as well, Goth hitting #1 in the AMRAP metro charts for community radio in November.
The group are pushing forward again in 2020. There’s new singles slated early, with a follow-up EP dropping around mid-year. They’re also going to show up on plenty more festival bills, so they’ll be nice and sharp for their first international tour in early 2021.
Party Dozen
Party Dozen are completely untethered. Experimental, improvisational, loud - their music is a wild haymaker that rings the flight or flight centre of your brain like a bell. It’s not something you throw on with your morning coffee but the agitated energy they build makes for an explosive live show.
Made up of percussionist Jonathan Boulet and saxophonist Kirsty Tickle (aka Exhibitionist), Party Dozen dropped a self-titled single in February as a kind of sonic mission statement, telling Pilerats it’s their “most frantic [song] and achieves the highest possible volume and anxiety". They played MONA FOMA, Yours & Owls, east coast dates and supported Viagra Boys (dream combo). They stunned BIGSOUND and picked up new management in Best & Fairest’s Neil Robertson.
For 2020, they’ve finished the follow-up to their 2017 debut album The Living Man and it’s coming out in the first half of year. The duo also have shows leading up to March when they’re headed to Adelaide to put the mad in WOMAD.
Pinkish Blu
The people have spoken, the sad banger is in, and Pinkish Blu are all over it. The bittersweet lyrics, synth swells and sharp guitar hooks - their sound is so soft and warm but so full of heartache. It’s exactly what you need if you’re looking to have a bit of a cry/dance.
They were triple j’s Unearthed Groovin The Moo Wayville winners in 2019 and signed to Sony Music Australia/123 Music in August. The band’s first move this year is a four-state, co-headline tour with Sydney dream-pop outfit EGOISM in February and March. They also told female.com.au that they were working on their debut album in an interview for their August single Superstar. Add in November follow-up Coupon and it seems likely we’ll get a full-length effort and a lot more shows out of the four-piece before it’s time to write next year’s wraps.
P-UniQue
Last year the rising Queen With Colour featured on triple j’s Bars Of Steel series, as well as being long-listed for the 2019 Corner Award and nominated for the National Live Music Awards’ Best Live Voice Act in VIC alongside acts like Didirri and Ali Barter. At BIGSOUND she was a unanimous highlight (and appeared on The Green Room with The Music’s own Neil Griffiths).
P-UniQue has got several new tracks in the pipeline, as well as a possible EP, and says that in 2020 we can expect “more music, more collabs, more festivals and much more of [her] SASS!”. What more could you want?
Sly Withers
“We’ve been working real hard on this shit for six years,” said guitarist and singer Sam Blitvich in the lead-up to their September EP Gravis and their efforts are primed to pay off in a big way.
The emotional indie-punks made huge headway in 2019. After signing deals with Dew Process/Universal Music Australia and Select Music in March, the group hit the road and stayed there. Between supports slots for Slowly Slowly and Amy Shark and two of their own headline runs Sly Withers ended up doing four laps of the country.
It feels like the zealous cult following the band have built over the years is transitioning into the mainstream. They won Best Punk/Hardcore Act at the WAM Awards, collaborated with fellow Perth act Carla Geneve and got rave reviews for their live sets, and they’re keeping up the pace in 2020. They found some time to get into the studio last month, putting together new music that they plan to have ready for release early this year. If they stick to their MO that means another tour’s not far off either.
Spacey Jane
Spacey Jane owned 2019. The J Award Unearthed Artist Of The Year nominees dropped three singles and sold out three national tours, the last round of shows taking in New Zealand as well. They played slots at Splendour In The Grass, Yours & Owls, Wave Rock Weekender and BIGSOUND. They signed a global deal with Kobalt’s recording company AWAL in December. And they finished their debut album, which is going to cause a ruckus when it comes out this year.
They’ve already been announced they will be back on the road for Laneway 2020 and there’s undoubtedly more dates coming, not to mention their first shows in the UK, including Hit The North and Live At Leeds festivals in May.
Stevan
It’s going to be a big year for Stevan. Over the last 12 months the young producer slipped smoothly into the country’s consciousness with four sunny indie-soul singles. LNT and Warm both quickly gathered Spotify streams in the hundreds of thousands, while Timee is sitting on over a million.
At BIGSOUND he became one of the event’s most talked-about artists, causing fierce debate between Team Timee and Team LNT. He also played Fairgrounds Festival and proved the perfect support for the NSW’s leg of Winston Surfshirt’s Baked Goods tour.
Shortly after BIGSOUND, he signed a global label deal with Astral People Recordings - only the second artist to do so after the PIAS co-op launched in July - co-founder Tom Hugget calling early that without a doubt 2020 was "Stevan’s year".
To start the new decade, Stevan is supporting Omar Apollo for his Laneway sideshows in Melbourne and Sydney, performing at A Festival Called Panama in March, and he has a lot of new music ready to go in the first half of the year.
Tiana Khasi
Listening to Tiana Khasi blind it’s easy to assume she's more established than she is, although longtime fans will recognise the high level of polish on her work from her days in hip hop outfit The Astro Travellers.
After featuring on Sampology’s 2016 track Thicker Than Water, she debuted with her own single Nuketown in 2018. The track revealed a new talent in the land of lush, spacious neo-soul grooves with jazz bones. Her EP Meghalaya, produced by Sampology and released via Soul Has No Tempo in March 2019, gave us more of the same.
Rolling Stone US took notice in May, calling Georgia’s Track a burning, "Baduizm-like slab of funk" in their 'Song You Need To Know’ series, before Khasi set out on her first headline tour the following month. She also picked up a Corner Award nomination and nods from BBC 1XTRA host Jamz Supernova and BBC Radio 6 Music’s Gilles Peterson.
In early 2020, you’ll be able to see Khasi at A Festival Called Panama and at Something Limited in Melbourne. The Queenslander has recently relocated to the city, where she’s working on her second record and prepping to release her Meghalaya remix EP.
U-Bahn
Only two more local shows to go from U-Bahn before they head out on their first international tour. The Melbourne art punks were on high-rotation in The Music's office last year, their self-titled debut one of our favourite albums from the first half of 2019, and they’ve just grown and grown since. Their first set of songs started as frontman Lachlan Kenny’s bedroom project before the band started coming together and the more they gel the better they get.
They’ve also picked up a new member in Stella Rennex, who’s bringing sax and glockenspiel to their synth-rich sound, and we’re extremely keen to see how the extra body will expand their live set.
Their follow-up album is already underway and they’re doing an extensive run of Europe and the UK through January and February. They’ve already had a vinyl reissue and some airplay in that part of the world and there couldn’t be a better place for them to start building a new following.
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