Tomorrow's Ten: Artists You Need to Know in March

Third Bridge Creative -

By Peter Berry, Sam Chennault, Kristin Corry, Hannah Elliott, and Michelle Hyun Kim of Third Bridge Creative.

This is the first installment of Tomorrow's Ten, a monthly column that highlights emerging artists using a combination of Charmetric data and the ear-to-the-ground knowledge of our contributors. In each post, we’ll identify 10 artists drawn from a wide range of artists and genres that you’ll be hearing a lot more from in the future, and we’ll conclude with a breakdown of how we use Chartmetric to discover and analyze breaking artists. Let’s get to it….

crushed

  • Chartmetric Artist Rank: 10,139
  • Genre: Pop
  • Country: United States

LA-based duo crushed make dream pop that’s filled with yearning melodies and tinged with ‘90s nostalgia. Bonding over Natalie Imbruglia’s 1997 hit “Torn,” vocalists Bre Morell and Shaun Durkan both came from different bands (Temple of Angels, Weekend, Soft Kill). Departing from projects that mostly took on post-punk and shoegaze, the new duo built out their own amalgamated sound of hazy guitar, trip-hop drums, and video game samples for their February debut EP, extra life. Since, they’ve quickly reached the 127.2K Spotify monthly listener mark in only four months—their debut single “waterlily” arrived in November 2022—with only six tracks to their name.

Jordan Ward

  • Chartmetric Artist Rank: 9,501
  • Genre: R&B/Soul
  • Country: United States

Jordan Ward moved to L.A. with the intention of being a professional dancer. After touring with Justin Bieber and landing a spot in Beyoncé’s coveted Coachella ensemble, Ward released Valley Hopefuls, about his time immersed in his adopted city’s community of creatives. Ahead of releasing Forward, his debut album (which was released this month), singles “White Crocs,” and “CHERIMOYA” emphasize Ward’s speciality: household items are transformed into full-blown songs with melodies that feel kissed by the sun. Jordan Ward isn’t just a name known in the dance community anymore, and he has 1M Spotify monthly listeners to prove it. The St. Louis native is now on the road with JID and Smino on the “Luv Is 4ever” Tour—and this time, it won’t be as a backup dancer.

Kara Jackson

  • Chartmetric Artist Rank: 61,279
  • Genre: Pop
  • Country: United States

Though she only officially began releasing her glowing, yet plainspoken folk songs last October, Kara Jackson has already emerged as the next leader of the Chicago indie scene. Through her introspective lyrics and tender voice, the 2019-2020 National Youth Poet Laureate has seen accelerating numbers on Spotify (editorial playlist reach has gone up 790.9%) and TikTok (top video views has shot up 818.8%) since releasing her January single “Dickhead Blues,” a witty skewering of deadbeat lovers that was named Pitchfork Best New Track. As listeners and critics have latched onto her earnest reflections on heartbreak and self-worth, hype around Jackson's upcoming debut, Why Does the Earth Give Us People To Love? (produced by Jackson herself alongside established Chicago indie favorites Kaina, Sen Morimoto, and Nnamdï) has only grown.

kurffew

  • Chartmetric Artist Rank: 5,835
  • Genre: Rock
  • Country: United States

Indie rock artist (and social media mastermind) kurffew has only been releasing music since January. Late last year, he posted teasers for songs and content about his ultra DIY approach to making music: he uses BandLab to produce tracks and records his vocals on the mic of his EarPods. To promote his song “Lazy,” a young Julian-Casablancas-esque earworm, he created a unique social media strategy posting snippets of a song he claimed to find on his little brother’s phone. To date, kurffew has released only four singles, along with their own “haste” (aka sped-up) versions, but already has almost 800K Spotify Monthly Listeners and a placement on Spotify’s Viral 50. Everything about kurffew’s quick rise is meticulous and well thought out, yet, it feels far from that.

Liv.e

  • Chartmetric Artist Rank: 11,962
  • Genre: R&B/Soul
  • Country: United States

With her sophomore album, Girl in the Half Pearl, Liv.e has established herself as a rising force in R&B. The Dallas-born, LA-based artist first broke out in 2018, catching the attention of Erykah Badu. While the two both fearlessly stretch R&B’s boundaries with psychedelic flair, Liv.e’s avant-garde soundscapes are hazy and sprawling, as she collages together references and vocal experimentations to evoke her own sonic world, in a similar vein as her collaborators MIKE and Earl Sweatshirt. Building on her 2020 debut Couldn’t Wait to Tell You, she’s gained new visibility with her second full-length. It earned Pitchfork’s coveted Best New Music, as well as prominent editorial playlist placements like Spotify’s Chill Vibes and Alternative R&B, leading her to a total reach of 11.5M listeners on the platform.

Lola Young

  • Chartmetric Artist Rank: 1,952
  • Genre: Pop
  • Country: United Kingdom

London Gen-Z artist Lola Young has already accomplished more than most people their age: They brought Amy Winehouse’s former manager Nick Shymansky out of retirement, played Glastonbury, and was nominated for the Brits’ Rising Star Award last year. Since Young began releasing music in 2019 their Spotify monthly listeners floated around 200K, fluctuating modestly in tandem with new releases. Their viral track “Don’t Hate Me,” attracted attention due to Young’s unique vocal grit and angsty lyrics that seem to set it apart from other shiny and wispy TikTok-launched pop songs. Last December, they stumbled on a content strategy: singing outside as they would in a studio. The videos were fruitful: Young found a spike in listeners and engagement with their Spotify monthly listeners rising to over 1.5M since the official release of “Don’t Hate Me” on February 24. With a viral track and My Mind Wanders and Sometimes Wanders Completely, a full LP, coming May 26, Lola Young is still just getting started.

Luh Tyler

  • Chartmetric Artist Rank: 3,679
  • Genre: Hip-Hop/Rap
  • Country: United States

Tallahassee, Florida teen Luh Tyler only began rapping last summer but he’s already mastered mellow, yet dexterous flows with quippy punchlines over easygoing soundscapes. His biggest single so far, "Law & Order," samples the theme song from the popular crime drama of the same name, and since its November release has earned over 10M YouTube views. His rapping is a cross between Kodak Black’s swampy Southern bars and Curren$y’s calm delivery, and he’s come a long way in a short time. The numbers (his Spotify monthly listeners have doubled since January, going from 500K to 1M) and a slick skillset say he's about to go a lot further.

Peso Pluma

  • Chartmetric Artist Rank: 367
  • Genre: Nueva Musica Mexicana
  • Country: Mexico

This 23-year-old trap corridos star broke out in 2022 on the back of “El Belicon,” a confident and charismatic track that launched Peso Pluma to the top of the Regional Mexican scene. In the meantime, he’s racked up a trio of star making collaborations in the scene, teaming with other young stars like Junior H, Nataneal Cano, and Luis R Conriquez. Bolstered by those performances, his profile has steadily risen, resulting in over 17M monthly listeners on Spotify gaining 7M monthly listeners in 2023 alone. In the past week alone he joined Marshmello on stage at EDC Mexico, teased a possible Bizarrap session, and is beginning to announce tour dates across North America.

Rob49

  • Chartmetric Artist Rank: 9,539
  • Genre: Hip-Hop/Rap
  • Country: United States

New Orleans rapper Rob49 captures the pain and power of growing up in the Big Easy. He started rapping in 2020 and since then has released a handful of mixtapes showcasing his natural charisma and modernized trap spin on the classic New Orleans/Cash Money sound. This year, he’s maintained that work ethic as a frequent collaborator, appearing on features with Trippie Redd (“ARMAGEDDON”) and French Montana (“Igloo”). But his 2020 track “No Kizzy” has become a staple in short form video. The track has gone viral twice—once as a dance challenge in November and again as a lip sync in February—in the last six months with over 200K TikTok videos made. It isn’t necessarily uncommon for a song to trend multiple times, but it usually means it has been sped up, memed, or remixed in some way to renew people’s interest. This is not the case with Rob49. People are interested and listening—no gimmicks necessary.

So!YoON!

  • Chartmetric Artist Rank: 8,049
  • Genre: Korean Indie Rock
  • Country: South Korea

Through her solo work and as the front person of South Korean indie rock band Se So Neon, alternative icon So!YoON! has established herself as an in-demand collaborator for her versatile blend of rock, R&B, and alt-pop. The 26-year-old guitarist began building major international buzz with her 2020 indie pop song “Wings” with Thai star Phum Viphurit, which has since racked up 19.1M Spotify streams. Since, she’s been enlisted by everyone from Brooklyn’s Japanese Breakfast (for a Korean remix of “Be Sweet) to Korean rap stars Jay Park and Lee Youngji (for the raucous rap track “WITCH”), proving her ability to easily cross genre and geography. Ahead of her sophomore solo album, Episode1: Love, arriving March 14, she’s shared the first single, “Bad,” a sultry R&B track depicting an addictive lover that’s racked up 1M YouTube views in the first two weeks.

The Method: Chartmetric’s Artist Career Stage and Artist Growth

The crux of our approach to finding emerging artists is using Chartmetric data to focus, harness and enhance the knowledge and cultural expertise of our journalists, curators, DJs, and data analysts. Every month, these teams evaluate hundreds of potential artists in consideration for this piece, as well as the playlists and projects we execute for our clients. This may seem like a lot of inputs, but it’s a small slice of the many many many acts huddled at the perimeters of pop culture, and, ultimately, this is a game of subtraction. One of the most important ways we use Chartmetric data is using engagement and velocity metrics from social and streaming platforms to whittle down and very quickly pre-qualify this large candidate pool to a list that’s manageable for a team of humans.

There are many signals in Chartmetric that we look at to do this, and those signals sometimes change depending on the types of artists we’re looking for, but one of the most valuable ones are the Chartmetric Artist Career Stage and Artist Growth features. You can find a full breakdown of what they mean and the criteria for scoring here, but, in short, it's a classification system that blends various metrics to determine where an artist is in their career and whether or not they’re advancing. For the list of artists above, we are looking for artists who are either undiscovered or developing, per Chartmetric's ranking system. There will occasionally be an artist who is mid level,” while we try to avoid artists who are tagged “legendary,” “superstar,” or “mainstream” acts. Similarly, using the artist growth features, we are able to eliminate artists who are not growing (“even”) or declining. Understanding which metrics to focus on, and building teams to analyze the data and provide qualitative input, is difficult and takes a lot of trial and error, but these two signals are a great shortcut.

Portions of this are included in Sound Signal, a bi-weekly newsletter from Third Bridge Creative. Sign up here.