By Brandon Ousley, Jaelani Turner-Williams, Colin Joyce, and Vrinda Jagota of Third Bridge Creative
In this week’s installment of our column following burgeoning artists, we’re exploring a Texan who wears her heart on her sleeve, Toronto’s next R&B savant, New York’s gloomy alt-rock, Arkansas’ homegrown country star, and Singapore’s viral pop sensation.
Dee Gatti
Chartmetric Artist Rank: 26,635
Genre: R&B/Soul
Country: U.S.
Texas-born singer-songwriter Dee Gatti is reshaping the tenets of contemporary R&B with her vulnerable lyricism since her debut on 2021’s Just Called to Say. Sporting a silky smooth voice that sublimely blends with moody R&B productions, her emotionally-driven tales on relationships, sexuality, and queer identity have powered recent top-streamed singles like “No Favors” (962K Spotify streams), “Timeless” (752K streams), and “Perfect Timing” (255K streams). Her latest single, “Keep the Peace,” is a rare glimpse of Gatti’s poignant, yet raw take on unrequited love. The stripped-down acoustic ballad has amassed 57K Spotify streams since its September 13 release. Already co-signed by Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Nija Charles and media personalities, Ebro Darden and Joe Budden, the PREACH Records signee has been a mainstay on editorial playlists R&B Weekly, DND., and Fresh Finds R&B while reaching 190K Spotify monthly listeners.
Rowena Fysx
Chartmetric Artist Rank: 17,362
Genre: R&B/Soul
Country: U.S.
Filipino-Canadian artist Rowena Fysx brings a deeply passionate twist to Toronto R&B on her second and latest EP, don’t text me back. Released on September 25th, the EP’s rhythmically ambient production complements Fysx’s light and airy vocals. Much like her soulful 2021 EP 3rr0r, Fysx’s graceful harmonies melt into the dreamy sounds on don’t text me back, like bluesy ballad “intention 4 u" (108K Spotify streams) and “dazed” (37K Spotify streams). New listeners have fallen for Fysx’s romantic nature, and over the last month, her Spotify monthly following has seen a 79.5K increase, reaching 130.6K. Her tracks can also be heard on editorial playlists POLLEN, R&B Weekly, and Lowkey.
NXCRE
Chartmetric Artist Rank: 1,287
Genre: Dark Trap
Country: U.S.
Part of the joy of New York songwriter NXCRE is his omnivorousness. His gloomy alt-rock songs pull on disparate threads from the history of rock and pop music—he’s said he looks equally to emotional songwriters like Jeff Buckley and Chris Stapleton and bonafide pop stars like Michael Jackson and Frank Ocean. His genre-blurring sound has found a host of fans—the post-punk-indebted “Usurper” held down a spot on Spotify’s Viral 50 for a few days and has also appeared on popular playlists like Viral Rock, Allure, and New Noise. With 714.2K monthly listeners on Spotify, NXCRE shows the power of not tying yourself too specifically to any one sound—there’s a little something for everyone.
Waylon Wyatt
Chartmetric Artist Rank: 8,257
Genre: Country
Country: U.S.
Seventeen-year-old Waylon Wyatt is the latest rootsy singer/songwriter to find an audience on the internet thanks to a searingly authentic and breathtakingly emotional take on country music. Like his collaborator Bayker Blankenship or more established artists like Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers, his songs are straightforward and from the heart—an approach that has seemed to resonate with both fans and tastemakers. He’s shown up on editorial playlists like homegrown, New Boots, and Breakout Country, all markers of a rising star in the genre.
Regina Song
Chartmetric Artist Rank: 3,285
Genre: Pop
Country: Singapore
Twenty-year-old Singaporean singer Regina Song has built a following around crushing hard and unabashedly. She uses her TikTok account to post about her crush potentially coming to her show, to share her followers’ love confessions, and to explain how she writes her songs (which are often about unrequited love). It’s all a part of promoting her music, which often goes viral on the platform.
In 2023 she signed with local label PARKA and later released “high school boy,” a sunny acoustic bossa nova track about being love-sick. It went viral on TikTok and has garnered 2.9M streams on Spotify. This June, she released her debut album, fangirl, which is all about the feeling of falling in love with the idea of someone. Her follow-up single “the cutest pair” is also gaining traction. A sped-up version of the song has been used in 44.9K TikTok videos, while the original track has 10.8M streams on Spotify. In the last month, her Spotify monthly listeners have increased by almost 500%.
Portions of this are included in Sound Signal, a bi-weekly newsletter from Third Bridge Creative. Sign up here.
Visualizations by Alejandra Arevalo and cover image by Crasianne Tirado; data as of Oct.15, 2024.