Future of Music 2026

Balu Brigada have turned sibling chemistry into a global alt-pop calling card.

Led by Auckland brothers Henry and Pierre Beasley, the New Zealand duo have spent the past few years steadily widening their world, from early EPs I Should Be Home and Find a Way to international label deals, viral moments, and major support slots with the likes of Twenty One Pilots.

Their 2025 debut album, Portal, felt like the culmination of their evolution. Written and entirely produced by the brothers over three years across New York, Berlin, and their hometown of Auckland, the record carries the imprint of each city: heavier, grittier textures from New York, more reflective calm from Auckland, and a restless sense of movement running through it all.

The duo have described the album as “a reflection of our commitment to experimentation in the studio,” and that spirit is all over its blend of indie rock energy, alt-pop polish, and obsessive detail.

The breakout moment came with “So Cold”, a sleek, infectious single that has amassed more than 55 million global streams, hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart, landed on the EA Sports FC 25 soundtrack, and earned Balu Brigada a late-night TV debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Alongside singles like “Backseat”, “Politix” and “Sideways”, it helped position Portal as both a breakthrough and a statement of intent. —Jade Kennedy

Borderline are arriving at their debut album with the momentum of a band who have grown up in public but never lost the spark that made them start out in the first place.

Formed in Auckland, the four-piece — Ben Glanfield, Jackson Boswell, Matthew McFadden, and Max Harries — have been friends since childhood, first releasing music together while still in high school. Their debut single “Spinning”, released in 2022 when the band members were just 16, quickly landed on the Hot 40 Singles chart and Radioscope Most Added charts, setting the tone for a rise that has only accelerated since.

After closing out 2025 with two singles landing in the top 10 New Zealand songs on radio, Borderline returned home from a 14-date tour across the US and Canada and stepped straight into a major new chapter.

Their self-titled debut album arrives June 26th via EMPIRE, featuring recent singles “Terrify”, “Tainted”, “Watching It Burn”, and latest release “That Girl”.

The album is “the sum of every single corner of musical inspiration from all four of us,” according to the band, shaped through home studio sessions, late nights, and time spent in Roundhead’s Brick Room experimenting with vintage synths and guitars.

“That Girl” captured that sense of maximalist fun. Leaning into their love of over-the-top ’80s-indebted instrumentation, the song is loaded with live vintage synths, big pop textures, and Michael Jackson / Prince-inspired vocals, with the band calling it “the result of four musicians not shying away from self-indulgence.”

That confidence is coming through beyond the studio too. Borderline are nominated for Breakthrough Artist of the Year and Best Pop Artist at the 2026 Aotearoa Music Awards, the latter placing them alongside global pop superstars Lorde and BENEE. They will also take their debut album on the road across Aotearoa and Australia in July, with shows in Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch, Tauranga, Rotorua, Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.

For a band still only at the beginning of their first album cycle, Borderline already sound like they are thinking bigger, with sharper songs, bolder production, and the kind of live ambition that makes the next step feel inevitable. —Jade Kennedy

BOY SODA has spent the past few years turning promise into proof.

The soulful Sydney-based artist was labelled one of Live Nation’s ‘Ones to Watch’ in 2023, and he has more than lived up to the tag, becoming one of the most compelling voices in Australia’s new wave of soul and R&B.

His debut album, Soulstar, arrived in 2025 as a bold 13-track statement: a genre-blurring journey through love, grief, celebration, self-discovery, and the work of breaking old patterns.

Released via Warner Music Australia, the album captured BOY SODA at 27, pulling apart the emotional weight of adulthood with warmth, honesty, and full musical colour.

“This is the story of me and how I think and love at 27,” he told Rolling Stone AU/NZ. “Soulstar expresses that with emotional truth.”

That truth resonated. The funky R&B single “Lil’ Obsession” became a breakout moment, racking up millions of streams worldwide and securing BOY SODA his first ARIA Award, taking home Best Soul/R&B Release last year. Its success carried into a sold-out debut album tour, followed by the 2026 ‘Lil’ Obsession’ tour across Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney.

Now, with Soulstar Deluxe coming out next month, BOY SODA is extending the world he so carefully built. The expanded release features five new tracks, including “Chase Your Tail”, a song about the loops, habits, and repeating lessons people struggle to break.

Recent trips to Los Angeles and New York, collaborations with international creators and media platforms, and a signing with LA-based United Talent Agency all point to a career scaling up fast. —Jade Kennedy

Bumpy’s music feels rooted in something much deeper than genre.

The Melbourne soul artist and proud Noongar woman has been steadily building a reputation as one of the country’s most stirring voices, earning Best New Talent at the 2023 National Indigenous Music Awards, a nomination for Independent Soul/R&B Release at the 2024 AIR Awards, and multiple Music Victoria Awards, including the Uncle Archie Roach Foundation Award.

Last year’s debut album, Kanana, feels like the fullest expression of that journey so far. Translating from Noongar as “Land Where the Sunsets”, the album is built around connection: to family, to Country, to language, to community, and to the small shared moments that hold people together.

Kanana is also deeply tied to family legacy. Bumpy returned to Noongar Boodja Country with her mother to further engage in her family’s language journey, retracing the footsteps of her family and Elders, including her late Nan, Rose Whitehurst, who wrote the first Noongar dictionary. Her sibling also contributes vocals and co-writes, making the album feel like both a personal statement and a shared act of preservation.

“I always want to make sure I am doing what I can to uplift community and work in ways that creatively nourish the people around us,” Bumpy said.

Before Kanana, Bumpy introduced herself with the self-produced 2023 EP Morning Sun, while also fronting Naarm neo-soul outfit Squid Nebula. But her debut album marked a significant arrival: soulful, grounded, and generous in spirit, with Bumpy using music as nourishment, memory, and community work. —Jade Kennedy

Cat & Calmell have always had a gift for making chaos sound polished.

The Sydney pop duo, made up of Catherine Stratton and Calmell Teagle, first broke through in 2020 with debut single “Dumbshit”, quickly establishing themselves as sharp, self-aware pop disruptors with a knack for turning anxiety, attitude, and internet-age disillusionment into hooks.

Their 2021 debut EP, Life of Mine, captured the restless energy of being young, reckless, and unsure of where everything was heading, while 2023’s How Do You Feel? sharpened their world further ahead of Australian support slots with Camila Cabello.

Along the way, they picked up industry recognition too, earning nominations at the APRA Awards, the J Awards, and the Rolling Stone Australia Awards.

Their most recent release, Live Laugh Cool Star, feels like Cat & Calmell at their most fully realised.

Built around themes of perception versus reality, celebrity culture, financial struggle, and hedonism as both performance and survival tactic, the mixtape captures the surreal pressure of looking put together while quietly falling apart.

That tension is where the duo thrive. On “Pop Music”, featuring Cult Shotta, they turn manifestation and self-belief into something playful, cocky, and slightly sideways, drawing from underground electronic and trap sounds while poking at what a pop song is supposed to be.

Glossy, satirical and emotionally frayed in all the right places, Cat & Calmell’s world is one where the party is fun, the joke is sharp, and the comedown is never too far away. —Jade Kennedy

Party-starting punk anthems. Community-driven gigs. Foo Fighters support slots. Fiery political songs. Dick Move can do it all.

Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s self-styled “socialist party-punk” band are now on their third album, Dream, Believe, Achieve, which bulldozed all in its path last year.

Dick Move, thrillingly led from the front by the impassioned Lucy Suttor, took on toxic men, capitalist politics, and patriarchal systems with lacerating honesty, which featured 13 blistering tracks delivered in just 25 minutes.

Standout tracks were strewn throughout the album, particularly “Nurses”, a snarling attack on the strategies of neoliberalism governments, and “Fuck It”, an equally loud and uncompromising rejection of outdated systems.

Dream, Believe, Achieve made it all the way to No. 2 on our year-end New Zealand albums list, and nominations at the Taite Music Prize and Aotearoa Music Awards followed this year.

Punk is all about speaking truth to power, and Dick Move do it better than most. With Aotearoa contending with an election in a few months’ time, there’s never been a better time to blast their angry (but hopeful) anthems. —Conor Lochrie

Earth Tongue are loud. Very loud. And somehow there’s just two of them.

After making the move to Europe — Berlin, to be precise — the Aotearoa fuzz-rock duo have quickly built up a strong following on the continent’s live music scene, with shows in their home country also regularly selling out.

Their rambunctious and theatrical third album, Dungeon Vision, arrived last year, which guitarist Gussie Larkin and drummer Ezra Simons finalised in Los Angeles with a little help from garage-rock king Ty Segall.

“Ty’s been a big driving force,” Simons previously said. “We supported him in New Zealand back in 2023, and he’s backed us ever since even bringing us on tour through Europe and the UK in 2024.”

Dungeon Vision hits hard wherever one listens to it, but Earth Tongue really deserve to be heard up close. If they come through your town next, make sure you go see them. —Conor Lochrie

Folk Bitch Trio make music that feels like it could have arrived at any point in the past 60 years and still made perfect sense.

The Melbourne trio, made up of Gracie Sinclair, Jeanie Pilkington, and Heide Peverelle, began singing together after meeting in high school, forming properly in 2020 with the release of their debut single “Houselights”.

Five years later, they released Now Would Be a Good Time, a debut album that sounds both gently old-world and unmistakably present.

There is an obvious timelessness to their sound, with close harmonies, acoustic arrangements, and the kind of vocal chemistry that can make a room go quiet.

Their songs could sit comfortably alongside early ’60s Greenwich Village folk, the indie-folk revival of the 2010s, or the current world of Boygenius, Julia Jacklin and Angie McMahon.

Phoebe Bridgers herself summed it up neatly, calling them “Boygenius if it was from the ’40s or something.”

But Folk Bitch Trio are not a nostalgia act. Their songwriting is full of modern nerves, sharp humour, and the emotional mess of being young and hyper-aware. Now Would Be a Good Time is delicate without being precious, intimate without feeling small, and often funny in the places you least expect.

The industry has taken notice. Now Would Be a Good Time earned nominations at the Australian Music Prize, the ARIA Awards and the J Awards, where Folk Bitch Trio won Unearthed Artist of the Year. With a Jagjaguwar signing behind them and APRA recognition following close behind, Folk Bitch Trio are no longer one of Australia’s best-kept secrets. —Jade Kennedy

We saw this coming.

“Start getting your Taite Music Prize outfit ready, Alexander-Marsters,” we told Geneva Alexander-Marsters, the restless creative behind Geneva AM, last year while hailing Pikipiki as one of the best Aotearoa albums of 2025.

Not only did a nomination for the 2026 Taite Music Prize duly come her way, but Geneva AM also won the Best Independent Debut Award thanks to her stunning debut album.

More awards glory could be on the way, too, with Geneva AM nominated in three categories at the forthcoming 2026 Aotearoa Music Awards, including for Album of the Year.

All of this critical acclaim is more than deserved for a musician so joyously comfortable in her artistic convictions.

“For Pikipiki I wanted to be in a healing space and sometimes that means seeking community, manifesting joy, creating space for renewal – you don’t have to do that alone… I feel like I’ve been crafting some kind of positive force field that I’m about to throw over everyone,” she previously told Under the Radar.

On Pikipiki, Alexander-Marsters bends classic genres — chiefly disco and dance — to her own will, reframing and rejuvenating them, utilising them to explore and honour her Māori heritage. —Conor Lochrie

Does Gen Z finally have its own Silverchair? If you’ve ever listened to HEADSEND, the answer is clearly yes.

The Byron Bay trio of Rasmus King, Kyuss King, and Bon Soric are at an earlier career stage than many of this year’s other Future 25 acts, which speaks to the strength of their first releases.

Whether it’s the Queens of the Stone Age-indebted “Do Do”, or the brooding “And Angel”, or the bruising “Stove”, HEADSEND are the sort of band that lead music journalists to exuberantly declare, “Guitar music is back.”

Guitar music never went anywhere, of course, but HEADSEND’s raw anthems sweep you up in such a fit of excitement for the future of alternative rock.

Angel Glands, their new EP, was recorded live in-studio Nick DiDia, who knows a thing or three about ’90s rock bands — he’s worked with Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, and Stone Temple Pilots — and the record contains muscular rhythms and ear-bashing riffs that would have made those esteemed bands proud.

Thanks to their burgeoning live circuit reputation, HEADSEND have quickly earned key festival slots around the UK and Europe. If they ever bring back Big Day Out (and they should), they need to be the first booking. —Conor Lochrie

Inertia are not interested in staying neatly inside the lines of heavy music.

The Sydney band have built their name on a sound that pulls dark pop, soul, emo, and metalcore into the same storm. Think the weight of Loathe, Spiritbox, and Thornhill colliding with flashes of The Weeknd and SZA, then dragged into something heavier, moodier, and more volatile.

That contrast has become Inertia’s greatest strength. Their music can move from sleek and melodic to explosive in seconds, balancing Latouche’s soaring vocal presence with driving riffs, sharp production, and an emotional intensity that never feels forced.

The fact they have self-produced every release only adds to the sense of control behind the chaos, with the band’s DIY ethic sitting at the centre of everything they do.

Their rise has been hard-earned. Across more than five million streams, a growing national following and releases through Resist Records, Inertia have carved out a serious place in Australia’s alternative scene.

Their debut album Second Shadow pushed that momentum even further, leading into a sold-out national tour with Headwreck and Synge in 2025.

They have also become a formidable live act, sharing stages with some of the biggest names in heavy and alternative music, including Polaris, Dayseeker, Northlane, Ocean Grove, Thornhill, Void of Vision, Holding Absence, Caskets, Thy Art Is Murder, and Story of the Year.

Heavy enough to level a room, melodic enough to stay lodged in your head, and ambitious enough to keep warping the shape of modern metal, Inertia are one of Australia’s most compelling heavy acts right now. —Jade Kennedy

Adam Hyde might have first made his name as one-half of electronic duo Peking Duk, but Keli Holiday is no side note.

What began as a post-breakup creative outlet has evolved into a fully realised solo project, full of emotional swagger, new wave shimmer, and songs that know exactly when to wink and when to wound.

Holiday’s music pulls from new wave, indie sleaze, pop, dance, and rock ’n’ roll, landing somewhere between broken-hearted balladry and full-body party music. It’s flamboyant, funny, sincere, and occasionally heartbreaking, but never careless.

His latest era has pushed him firmly into breakout territory. The ARIA No. 1 single “Dancing2” became a viral force on TikTok, soundtracking tens of thousands of creations, before Holiday opened the ARIA Awards with a star-studded performance of the track and took home the award for Best Video.

His Like A Version cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” also struck a nerve, racking up more than a million views within its first day online and earning an official release after fans demanded it.

Holiday’s second album, Capital Fiction, has only sharpened the picture. The record hit No. 1 on the Australian Albums chart, No. 3 on the ARIA Albums chart, and No. 5 on the Vinyl chart, marking a major moment for a project that began as something Hyde wasn’t even sure he would release.

What makes Keli Holiday work is that beneath the unserious-pop sparkle and theatrical bravado, there is genuine emotional weight. Hyde has built a world where heartbreak can still dance, where longing can wear sunglasses indoors, and where one song can be both a joke and a gut-punch. —Jade Kennedy

Luca George writes like someone trying to make loneliness feel less lonely.

The Aotearoa singer-songwriter has already built serious momentum, amassing more than 6 million total artist streams and a growing social audience, including a strong TikTok following. Songs like “Better Apart”, “Crying in the Bathroom”, and “brOKen” have earned support across radio, streaming, and student networks in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, while his debut EP You’ll Never Know Me Sober introduced an artist with a gift for turning heartbreak into widescreen pop confessionals.

That gift has not gone unnoticed. “Suit of Blue” earned a nomination at the 2024 APRA Silver Scroll Songwriting Awards, while Troye Sivan also hand-picked George as the only New Zealand artist to take part in an APRA songwriting camp he curated.

His second EP, Say hi to Paula, felt like a major step forward. Created with collaborators including Gabrielle Aplin, Spacey Jane’s Caleb Harper, and producer Konstantin Kersting, the five-track project — released late last year — moves between upbeat pop, mid-tempo ache, and devastating balladry, all while circling themes of heartbreak, loneliness, hope, and trying to feel less broken.

“We’re in the business of connection,” George told Rolling Stone AU/NZ. “If you can find yourself in any of those songs and feel a little bit less alone, I think that’s when I’ve done my job.”

Now based in London after years of dreaming about the move, George is stepping into a bigger world with the same raw, open-hearted songwriting that first made people listen. —Jade Kennedy

Memphis LK has always understood that dance music can hit hardest when it lets a little heartbreak in.

The Melbourne singer-songwriter, producer, and DJ, born Memphis Kelly, first stepped into her solo era in 2019 after previously making music as part of Saatsuma.

Having learned Ableton as a teenager, she built her world from the ground up, carving out a sound rooted in electronic music but guided by feeling as much as rhythm.

Across EPs including 1, Too Much Fun, True Love and Consequences, and Say, Memphis LK has refined a style that sits in the sweet spot between melancholy and euphoria. Influenced by artists like Four Tet, James Blake, and Burial as well as UK garage, breakbeat, and Detroit electro, her music is both club-ready and deeply intimate.

That balance has made her a compelling presence on festival stages too, with sets at Splendour in the Grass, Beyond the Valley, Listen Out, Pitch Music & Arts, The Great Escape, and Way Out West, alongside recognition from the AIR Awards and Music Victoria Awards.

Recent singles including “Cherry n Coke”, “DMW”, “Skyflower”, “Fixated”, and “That Boy’s Not Nice” have continued to expand her palette, but it’s her recent single “Some Kinda Heaven” that feels especially luminous. The song captures what Memphis LK does best: turning tension, tenderness, and release into immersive modern dance music.

Arriving as she embraces motherhood with her new baby, Xuri, “Some Kinda Heaven” carries a fresh sense of perspective without losing the pulse that has always powered her work. Memphis LK’s music still belongs to the dancefloor, but it lingers long after the lights come up. —Jade Kennedy

It makes so much sense that Black Country, New Road asked Mouseatouille to support them not once but twice.

Like the English post-rock outfit, Mouseatouille are an extensive ensemble of tight-knit collaborators who put the collective first, although The Microphones often seem like a more obvious sonic touchstone.

Mouseatouille’s nine (!) members sounded magically cohesive, in spite of the lineup’s sprawling size, on the lush and melancholic DJ Set, one of our favourite Australian albums of 2025.

At once grand and intimate, often within the span of one song, the album found Mouseatouille traversing delicate indie-folk, orchestral chamber-pop, and chaotic noise-rock, gamely incorporating a number of instruments into the mixture, including violin, clarinet, synths, and guitars.

Originally started as a recording project for lead singer Harry Green and drummer Spencer Noonan during high school, Mouseatouille are now thriving as a massive ensemble because they simply sound like a bunch of mates gleefully experimenting with music for the fun of it. —Conor Lochrie

Muroki was the first artist signed to BENEE’s independent label, Olive Records, for a reason.

A shapeshifting artist of the highest order, equally comfortable making pop, reggae, and indie songs, Muroki has been making waves since, well, “Wavy” became a breakout hit five years ago.

Since then Muroki has bounced from country to country, soaking up different music scenes and cultures, from Raglan to Kenya and Berlin.

That’s why his highly anticipated debut album, Amber Skies, sounded like a truly global affair when it was released this year, written and recorded as it was while Muroki was living a nomadic lifestyle between Germany, the Portuguese coast, back with his family in Kenya, and in Aotearoa.

Muroki returned home to celebrate Amber Skies with his first New Zealand tour in three years, including a special show at Auckland Arts Festival. —Conor Lochrie

When we launched our first-ever immersive Scene Report last year, Ōtepoti Dunedin was the standout choice.

2025 was one of the best years for Dunedin’s music scene in a generation, with bands like Dale Kerrigan, IVY, and Vagina Dry releasing career-best work.

It was another band from the city’s tight-knight alternative rock community, however, that released a record on the hallowed Flying Nun label: Pearly*.

A word-of-mouth sensation around Aotearoa, Pearly* announced themselves in a major way with Not So Sweet, their eclectic and atmospheric debut album.

While overseas outfits like Oasis, Pixies, and Radiohead are clear inspirations, the influence of legendary Flying Nun bands such as The Clean is also imprinted on their sound, with Pearly* continuing the proud lineage of indie rock in Australasia’s most historic music city.

If there’s technically nothing ‘new’ going on in Pearly*s music — they blend angsty, brooding lyrics with fuzzed-out, distorted guitars — it’s the four members’ individual talent and collective interplay that makes them sound so exciting and necessary. Dunedin’s next breakout band is here. —Conor Lochrie