Alt pop is a wide tent, and this week’s five artists prove it. Synth pop from a songwriter back after four decades off, a cinematic breakup anthem, a ballad about stage fright turning into courage, haunting Brighton electronics, and a globe-trotting violinist. Dig in. ✨
Michellar -Do we love us
Michellar makes wonderful synth-pop with real emotional weight, from an artist who took four decades off and came back swinging.
Do we love us explores the complexities of relationships, that delicate balance between closeness and restraint, with a musical sophistication that belies its breezy synth-pop surface. The track started life as a slower, guitar-driven composition before transforming into something with much more infectious energy, recorded in San Francisco and produced and mastered in Romania by Marius Alexandru. The result sits in its own space: emotionally honest and loads of fun.
Michellar’s story is remarkable. She’s been writing songs since she was 15, then had a 40-year break from music. What reignited her? An acceptance to the deYoung Museum’s Open Call Exhibition in 2023 gave her the confidence boost she needed, and since then she’s released 22 singles in nine months. Twenty-two. Whatever she’s doing, it’s clearly working – we love it.
Keena Kee – Ex’s Funeral
Keena Kee delivers a breakup anthem with a twist: this one doesn’t mourn love lost, it buries it with full, wonderful intention.
Ex’s Funeral arrives as one of the more striking singles of the year so far, a bold, cinematic alt-pop track that reframes heartbreak not as devastation but as personal rebirth. Keena Kee’s “Exotic Pop” sound blends genre-blurring textures with emotionally charged songwriting produced by Sergio De Anda, and the result feels less like a breakup song and more like a declaration of independence. The music video, set in a western-inspired landscape with Von Dutch pieces and Thelma & Louise energy, is a genuinely striking visual.
The track also features the musical debut of internationally renowned supermodel Valery Kaufman (Chanel, Dior, Tom Ford, Vogue), who co-stars in the video and contributes vocals for the first time. It’s a bold creative left turn for Kaufman, and she pulls it off. Keena Kee herself is a queer New York-based artist whose work explores identity, empowerment, and emotional evolution. This is the freshest breakup song we’ve heard in ages.
Exzenya – The Fans Applauded
Exzenya writes a soft, sincere ballad about the exact moment stage fright transforms into something beautiful.
The Fans Applauded is built around a very specific, very real experience: standing on stage, overwhelmed with fear, questioning whether you can go through with it, and then something unexpected happens. The audience starts to sing along. The fear turns into courage. It’s a simple idea told with real warmth, and Exzenya’s strong female vocals carry it exactly as far as it needs to go. It’s compelling stuff.
Exzenya is an independent artist who makes emotionally driven, storytelling-focused music under her own label Exzenya Productions. Her previous single “Drunk Texting” was a satirical R&B-comedy blend drawn from a real-life incident on a chaotic Miami trip. She has a knack for finding the universal in the very personal, and The Fans Applauded is her most heartfelt work to date.
Third Bloom – Grace
Third Bloom makes haunting, compelling electronic music that leaves you quietly changed. A lot of wonderfully things happens in these eight minutes.
“Haunting and compelling” is how Third Bloom describes their own music, and that’s just about exactly right. Grace is a chillstep/trip-hop/electronic piece from the Brighton-based musician and visual artist who has built a reputation for dark, unsettling sonic structures that are somehow also beautiful. The compelling sound world, standout vocals and core message means that it rewards headphone listening in a dark room.
Third Bloom is known for his deeply atmospheric approach to both music and visual art. The aesthetic is consistently unsettling in a way that pulls you in rather than pushing you away. Grace is the latest expression of that, and it’s one of his strongest pieces. If you like your electronica, dark, beautiful and with all the best kinds of meaning, look no further.
Oslo Green – MaYbe
Oslo Green is a violinist-turned-producer who’s been everywhere and brought it all home: wonderfully global, cinematic, and deeply personal.
MaYbe is the lead single from Oslo Green’s album No Strings Attached, and the album title is a joke. There are a lot of strings. A classically trained violinist and producer, Oslo Green spent years travelling across NYC, Nairobi, Milan, Tel Aviv, Berlin, London and more, writing and producing on the go, absorbing different musical languages and blending them into something singular. The result is pop that’s simultaneously R&B, Motown-influenced, chamber-pop, and cinematic. It’s great.
The album arrives as a fully cohesive world: “a promise I clearly couldn’t keep, both in relationships but also when it comes to the amount of strings I recorded,” as Oslo Green himself puts it. He’s also a co-founder of the creative collective NYADO, and his background spans jazz, composition, orchestral work, and Afrobeats. This is the kind of debut album that makes you follow the artist very closely. Compelling stuff.