This week, we’re diving into Barbados’ next R&B princess, the candied indie-pop bubbling in Brooklyn, and examining the unrest within a prominent K-Pop label. If you enjoy this newsletter, pass it on to a friend. They can sign up here. Sound Signal is a bi-weekly newsletter produced by Third Bridge Creative for people in the music industry that identifies emerging artists, tracks, as well as new scenes and genres. P.S. Sound Signal is now on Instagram! Follow us here. 

TRENDING ARTISTS

Amanda Reifer

Genre: R&B/Pop

TBC Score: 64

Barbados-born singer-songwriter Amanda Reifer adroitly channels her emotions through a prism of R&B, pop, hip-hop, and Caribbean styles. After fronting breakout Barbadian band Cover Drive, she built her sturdy solo career on a bevy of solo singles and a notable feature on Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 Grammy-nominated single, “Die Hard.” Now, she’s aiming for bolder artistic heights with her forthcoming project, The Reifer Files. A conceptual series of interludes, visuals, and full-length songs, she’s been teasing the ambitious project since late March by rolling out three of its interludes. The latest, “Devastating (Interlude),” dips into romantic longing, with Reifer’s sultry vocals riding a soulful reggae-tinged groove. This slow jam has gained 18K Spotify plays, bringing the alt-R&B vanguard a total of 3M Spotify monthly listeners with playlist support from New Music Friday and R&B Weekly.    

Sex Week

Genre: Alternative/Indie

TBC Score: 84

A new Brooklyn duo is already making waves with only two songs to their name. Sex Week’s debut song, “Toad Mode,” which dropped this past November, is a sweet-sounding indie rock duet between the band’s two principal members. Their latest, “Angel Blessings,” came with an announcement that they’ve signed to Grand Jury Music, a label that’s home to indie staples Samia and Native Sun, with Stereogum’s James Rettig calling it an “addictive homespun rock song that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on an Orchid Tapes compilation circa 2014.” The bio for Sex Week cites influences ranging from Ryuichi Sakamoto to Johnny Cash, and the band has been playlisted on Spotify’s All New Indie and Fresh Finds Indie. Currently ranking in the top 200 Indie Pop artists on Chartmetric, it’s not premature to suggest they’ll be ones to watch this year.

MIKA 米卡

Genre: Pop

TBC Score: 62

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, multinational pop artist MIKA 米卡 has built his career performing in Japanese and Chinese, until finally breaking through with an English-speaking audience as a solo artist this year. After debuting in the Japanese boy group Intersection in 2018 and then getting placed in the Chinese boy group Into1 in 2021, he released his first solo EP, bleached, a collection of melancholy R&B songs mostly sung in English, in December 2023. Now, that project is finally bringing in an audience, as his live performance video for bleached track “so I don’t forget” has gained 2.3M YouTube views since its March 12 release, with many commenters in awe of  his talent after stumbling upon the clip via a YouTube ad—leading to a 37.2% increase in YouTube channel views in the past month.

Lil Tony

Genre: Hip-Hop/Rap

TBC Score: 60

After kicking off his rap career during the pandemic, Lil Tony Official already has two handfuls of  projects that establish him as a worthy Atlanta narrator. With a flow oscillating between melodic to punchy, the rising voice of the South’s most recent projects Lil Tony Archive: Volume 1 (released April 12) and 2 (released May 3) are widening his profile. Since releasing Archives, Lil Tony has seen a 300K increase in TikTok Likes, 59.9K boost in YouTube views, and his Spotify Fan Conversion rate is up 22%. Atlanta rap is experiencing a changing of the guards: Young Thug is incarcerated, the future of Migos’ is uncertain following Takeoff’s death, and Lil Baby is unusually quiet. Lil Tony is making a bid to take the top spot. 

TRENDING TRACKS

After debuting as part of the influential ‘90s K-pop girl group Fin.K.L, singer/performer Lee Hyori ascended as South Korea’s Y2K It Girl with “10 Minutes,” a 2003 pop-R&B hit indebted to the likes of Destiny’s Child and J.Lo. This April, the groovy track has seen a resurgence due to a TikTok trend dedicated to makeup and fashion looks from the early aughts, bringing its video count to 23.3K TikToks. The attention has led to a surge in Spotify listens, racking up 8.8M streams in the last month alone and finding new peaks on viral charts worldwide (Australia, Turkey, Peru, and more), proving that the Y2K pop craze—and its reinterpretation through K-pop—is sweeping global markets outside of the U.S.

Tommy Richman was just an unknown name but is well on his way to becoming a “MILLION DOLLAR BABY.” The Woodbridge, Virginia native started previewing the spunky, Alt&B record to his 233K TikTok followers in late April. Due to the demand, the Brent Faiyaz ISO Supremacy and PULSE Records signee officially released the track on Friday, April 26. In just a week, the groovy song and its bass-boosted VHS visual has been streamed over 23M times on Spotify (alternatively earning around 3M streams per day). Additionally, It’s sitting at No. 4 on Apple Music’s Top 100: Global and Top 100: USA charts with over 60.8K creations on TikTok. An early song of the summer contender, “MILLION DOLLAR BABY” is officially Tommy’s first Billboard Hot 100 hit, coming in second to none other than Taylor Swift.

Everyone has been talking about Challengers, the new Zendaya-Josh O’Connor-Mike Faist tennis threesome film directed by Luca Guadagnino of Call Me By Your Name fame. Guadagnino recruited film score duo and Nine Inch Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who’ve composed for Gone Girl, HBO’s Watchmen series, and The Social Network, with a request that the music be “very loud techno music.” The result is a soundtrack reminiscent of sex-fueled mid-’00s dance hits that could—and perhaps should—inspire Challengers-themed club nights. Reznor and Ross are now ranking in the top 3K on Chartmetric. It’s the title track doing the highest numbers; skillfully reimagined by German producer Boys Noize on the accompanying remix album, “Challengers [Mixed],” will likely find its way into this summer’s party playlists.

Camper—the New Jersey-born, Grammy-winning R&B and hip-hop producer behind hits for Coco Jones (“ICU”), H.E.R. (“Focus”) and countless others—is gearing up for a love-filled 2024 with his forthcoming compilation album, CAMPILATION. In teasing the star-studded offering, he’s kicked things off with its romantic lead single, “I Need It.” The bedroom come-on plays as a steamy conversation between lovers, melding R&B stalwart Tank’s pleading, velvety tone with Syd’s hypnotic vocals over Camper’s dreamy production. Since its April 26 release, the single has racked up over 130K Spotify spins with placements on several editorial playlists like R&B Weekly, Chilled R&B, and Silk Sheets—proving that the power of romance still reigns in R&B.      

TREND OF THE WEEK

By Rachel Saywitz

While the hip-hop world has been engrossed in Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s vitriolic rap feud, a different kind of diss track is going viral in South Korea. The person firing shots isn’t an artist at all, but Min Hee-jin: the CEO of record label ADOR, and the creator and creative director of NewJeans, one of Korea’s biggest breakout artists. Min’s target? Her employer, the K-pop juggernaut and label of BTS, HYBE Entertainment. 

The conflict started in mid-April, when HYBE began conducting an audit of ADOR, soon claiming that Min was plotting a takeover of the label. A war of words between ADOR and HYBE quickly spiraled into a messy conflict—Min denounced any plotting while accusing HYBE’s newest girl group, ILLIT, of copying NewJeans’ sound and aesthetic in their debut EP from March. HYBE announced that they would formally report Min to the police for breach of trust, while claiming she had accused even more K-pop acts, like TWS, RIIZE, and even BTS, of copying NewJeans. The dispute is complex and ongoing, even as NewJeans prepares to release a new single this month. 

Seeing two of the most prominent names in the K-pop industry engage in a public, messy fight is already jaw-dropping. But what really set the Korean public ablaze was an April 25 press conference held by Min, where she rambled, cried, and sweared (to the visible distress of her lawyers) for two hours about all the ills HYBE’s executives had seemingly passed onto her. Min is only one of a few female CEOs operating in the K-pop space, and her passionate pleas could easily have been understood as an independent creative mind fighting against HYBE’s corporate machine. 

And what of the two groups at the center of this civil war, NewJeans and ILLIT, who—quite frankly—have the most to lose? Well, for the most part, they appear to be doing just fine. In the weeks since the conflict, ILLIT’s Spotify monthly listeners have grown by 31%, and the group has continued to rack up wins on music shows and top Korean music charts with their debut single, “Magnetic.” NewJeans, meanwhile, has seen their past catalog creep up the same charts: on Korea’s Weekly Melon chart for example, their single “Hype Boy” rose from #30 on April 21st to #19 on May 5. In fact, as of May 5, five NewJeans singles appear in the top half of the chart. It’s a welcoming show of support in what must be a distressing situation for the young members, as if listeners and fans are choosing a side.