SEARCH FOR: UNDERSCORES

Being from North Carolina I feel as if I have to be a great brand ambassador and curator for the Carolinas as a whole with my platform. Of course, I’m only going to try to highlight the music and artist worth peeping. Today I’m going to introduce you to Hovis the 18-year-old artist out of Wilson, North Carolina, and the smooth and quirky track “Looking.” I really wish I could use another word to describe it as quirky but I can’t really describe it and I don’t want to butcher the description. Lately in the underground pop and hyperpop scene. There’s a sub-genre that’s adding a lot of traditional pop elements along with digicore and hyper pop elements. I know that sounds like a lot of different sounds fused into one but trust me there are a lot of artists that are going to break this year and next overall sound. Some of Hovis’ influences include Dolly, Kurtains, and Veezuh in the digicore scene. However, he also stated that he finds inspiration in artists such as Brakence, underscores, Quannnic, and more. This s another young artist that didn’t start making music until recently as he started making music in mid-late …

Albany, NY native but New York City residing artist itsoverjorden debuts in our pages today with his new single “Undercover Pain” that uniquely blends modern sounds with a grainy and hypnotizing video to bring the track to life. The instrumental is memorable and is carried by a simple but magnetic synth pattern which underscores the heavy-hitting percussion while Jorden’s vocals harken an almost pop-punk like influence, showcasing his vocal range with a passionate but hollow and atmospheric delivery. This is a great introduction to itsoverjorden and he is yet another name you must know in NYC’s burgeoning underground scene that is receiving new and additional life from the success of such artists who have remained consistent while fine-tuning their sound and image and I look forward to hearing what he has on the way.

Virginia Beach artist Ant Chulo recently just unloaded a groovy-but-trancey new track entitled “The Frequencies” where he blends together melodic alt-r&b vocals with an up-beat house-inspired percussion line which underscores Ant Chulo’s delivery that interchanges between easy-going and spellbinding. I love to see current rap or r&b styles intersect with electronic music and particularly house as its rhythms are so well suited for this type of singing. His main goal is to help push the boundaries of hip-hop and with his newest track “The Frequencies” he does exactly that and I am excited to see what direction he pushes in next.

“Get Refreshed” is a weekly column by Billy Bugara covering all things digital in the music world. Refresh yourself here.  Cover by Brixton Yorker Ecco2k: “PXE” Before last week, the prevailing notion behind Ecco2k’s inevitable return after 2019’s still-unparalleled E was already set in stone: when it happens, it’s going to be something new, unfounded, and rooted in this magnificent creative’s ever-evolving artistry. And with the surprise release of “PXE” – a brief, 5-track EP with an accompanying short visual by Japanese-based artist Freddy Carrasco  – that’s exactly what we got in every sense of those terms. But based on how dramatic of a departure most of this project is from something as clear and defining as his debut album, we were given an even more nuanced experience than we could have ever asked for.  We certainly weren’t expecting such a clean slate to be presented to us here, but it’s safe to say that we’re better off for it. Ecco himself has dubbed the sounds both heard and felt on this project as “pixie music” — music that conveys something of a “live” atmosphere about it, yet transcends that simplistic description into something completely beyond that scope. It’s music …

“Get Refreshed” is a weekly column by Billy Bugara covering all things digital in the music world. Refresh yourself here.  Cover by Bernard Vernon fishmonger, Or, How To Be Today’s Perfect Album For Yesterday What do you call an album that sets out to do everything, and then does more than everything? I think I’d refer to an album like this as “one in a million,” but fishmonger also works just as well. We were promised quite an impactful project given the anticipation that came from underscores’ long-awaited solo return, yet none of us could have predicted the sheer ambition, flawless sonic balance, and masterfully-constructed songwriting that this album ended up exhibiting — all under the mantle of numerous sounds, styles, and overall creative dynamism within this 34-minute journey.  This is the first album to fully, and I mean fully, encompass what the decade of the 2000s means to those who grew up in it; it goes above and beyond what even the likes of 100 Gecs have been able to do inside that same arena. Everything is here, and it’s here en masse: the brightest points of pop’s teen-centric era, the emotionally-profound soundscapes of alt-rock and emo that laid …

The endless space that the grander online music setting fosters allows for any artist, no matter what their size and stature is, to exercise their creative freedom from a limitless amount of angles. Perhaps there is no better representation of this concept in full effect than with underscores — one of music’s most prolific acts across this landscape, but one who has earned that title in somewhat of a nuanced manner.  After steadily building their reputation over a lengthy period of time with their stripped-back and indie electronica-infused pop cuts on a solo basis, they spent the entirety of 2020 strengthening the already-established Six Impala project to its highest peaks yet. The breakout year that they and the rest of the group had was certainly worth all the effort put in by them, and the future is looking magnificent for all of them as a result.  But as 2021 began, we paid witness to the long, long-awaited return of underscores’ solo work; February brought with it their first solo single in over a year’s time with “Second hand embarrassment.” This track and its accompanying video are entirely emphatic for just about every reason one could imagine. Not only does this …

An artist by the name of JT Flowers makes his debut today with a new single titled “Lose My World”. The track functions as an introduction to Flowers’ meshing of grunge and trap influences as his gravelly voice roars over incessant 808s and eerie guitar—a grimy sound that underscores the introspection in Flowers’ lyrical content. The press release for Flowers’ debut single explains that the Portland-based artist “recently pivoted away from a Yale degree, a Rhodes Scholarship, and a sure-to-be successful career in politics.” The sense of sacrifice in “Lose My World” gets amplified with that context in mind, and with an EP slotted for later this month, Flowers seems to be putting music above all other endeavors. Listen to “Lose My World” below: