GoneTrending

The Indiana Pacers announced a major bit of news on Tuesday afternoon involving the health and well-being of recently-acquired wing Caris LeVert. After previously revealing that a mass was identified on LeVert’s left kidney during a routine physical following his trade as part of the gigantic deal that sent James Harden to Brooklyn, the Pacers announced that LeVert underwent surgery to treat renal cell carcinoma, a form of kidney cancer.

Thankfully, LeVert — who had credited the trade for unveiling this, saying “I was 100% healthy so in a way this trade definitely showed and revealed what was going on in my body.” — is expected to make a full recovery, per the team.

“Caris LeVert underwent successful surgery on Monday to treat renal cell carcinoma of his left kidney,” the Pacers said in a statement. “The surgery was performed by Dr. Jason Sprunger at Community North Hospital in Indianapolis, Ind. No further treatment is needed. Caris is expected to make a full recovery and will be out indefinitely. Further updates will be provided as needed.”

LeVert making his debut for the Pacers, whenever that may end up being, is obviously second to the fact that this was identified and treated as soon as possible. This is a scary thing for anyone to have to deal with, particularly due to the fact that it came from out of left field, and hopefully LeVert is back to being 100 percent as soon as possible.

It seems surreal that Tuesday is the one-year anniversary of Kobe Bryant’s passing. Of course, it still feels surreal that Bryant is gone after a helicopter crash that also took his daughter, Gianna, and seven others, but for many in the basketball world, Tuesday offered up the opportunity to look back on Bryant’s life and tenure in and around the NBA.

A number of individuals, whether they be current and former players and coaches or larger institutions, took to their Twitter accounts to offer up a kind word to Bryant and the rest of those who passed away.

In an interview with TMZ, one of Bryant’s former coaches, Byron Scott, discussed the importance No. 24 had in his life, to the point that he finds himself thinking about who he calls an “unbelievable person” on a daily basis.

“There’s two people that passed away in my life,” Scott said. “My mom, who I think about all the time, and ‘Showboat.’ I think about him every day. It’s something about him that, in my life, every day something brings me back to a memory of KB.”

The Lakers, unsurprisingly, offered up a tribute, too, calling both Kobe and Gianna “family,” a sentiment that the NBA shared.

Honoring both Bryants was also done by another team for which Kobe suited up, USA Basketball, and by another one of the many residents of the Staples Center, the L.A. Sparks.

UConn women’s basketball decided to remember Gianna, a well-documented Huskies fan who had ambitions of suiting up for Geno Auriemma’s program some day.

Even FIBA chimed in, recalling one specific Kobe moment from a game that the United States played against Brazil back in 2007.

It seems certain that Tuesday will feature dozens more tributes to Bryant as the day goes on, both on social media and during the three games that the league has on its schedule this evening. Then again, it’s hard to watch or follow basketball without seeing someone pay tribute to Bryant in some form or fashion.

Pasadena-based artist Charlie Hickey has a new EP coming out in February, Count The Stairs. The effort is produced by Marshall Vore, who got his collaborator Phoebe Bridgers to lend her vocals to the track “Ten Feet Tall.” Hickey shared a lo-fi visual for the song today, and Bridgers went above and beyond the role of backing vocalist by riding a scooter in the video.

Bridgers shared the track on Twitter and wrote, “very, very proud of this one.”

Hickey says of the song:

“‘Ten Feet Tall’ is sort of a different animal than any other song I’ve written. I was going to school at the time and was feeling quite alienated in this little world where everybody was instantly partying with their brand new best friends and fun came so naturally. I found solace in Marshall’s studio on the weekends. This was our first proper attempt at writing together and we were writing something really horrible. We were both kind of delirious and Marshall started singing the verse melody for the song as a joke, making fun of what we had been trying to write. But when I heard it, I said to him, ‘Wait, that’s the song that we’ve been trying to write.’ After that, we wrote the rest that night and recorded it the next day. We re-recorded it a few times before going back to what we did that day. I’ve never written or recorded a song like that since, and we weren’t sure it was even gonna come out but when I hear it back, it really serves as a time capsule of a very confusing/depressing but also very fruitful and fun time in my life!”

Listen to “Ten Feet Tall” above and find the Count The Stairs art and tracklist below.

1. “No Good At Lying”
2. “Count The Stairs”
3. “Two Haunted Houses”
4. “Seeing Things”
5. “Ten Feet Tall”
6. “Notre Dame”

Count The Stairs is out 2/26 via Charlie Hickey.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Given the method of BRS Kash’s introduction, it’d be silly to expect a wide breadth of topics and a ton of lyrical depth on his debut project, Kash Only. His current viral popularity was ushered in on the wave of goodwill generated by “Throat Baby,” a tongue-in-cheek ode to oral sex that turned a request for head into a woozy, nigh-romantic anthem. With that kind of calling card, anyone hoping for trenchant takes on the state of the criminal justice system or pensive reflections on mental health should already know to look elsewhere.

But while so many purveyors of pop-heavy, club-ready party rap anthems often experience difficulty extending their festive feats beyond their initial breakout hits, on Kash Only, the Atlanta native finds a comfortable groove in which his raunchy rhymes can revel. Moving along at a brisk pace and utilizing sticky, unique-sounding hooks throughout, Kash Only is a lighthearted introduction to LVRN’s latest addition and proves he has the juice to keep the party going past his signature single (and its equally racy remix).

It doesn’t take long for Kash to establish that while the goopy crooning on “Throat Baby” is surely the most effective tool in his kit, it’s far from the only one. On intro “No Manners,” he glides assuredly over a JetsonMade-inspired conglomerate of skittering 808s and whimsical recorder tunes — you know, those little baby flutes from your primary school music class — adopting a flow that is fittingly reminiscent of DaBaby’s and coolly referencing Nelly’s Country Grammar to describe his ideal girl.

Intriguingly enough, Jetsonmade does make a pair of appearances after clearly inspiring that intro, on “Shake,” which reprises the flutey sounds of “No Manners” with a beat that could also have appeared on one of DaBaby’s last few singles. Fortunately, the album changes gears before this trick can get stale, and “Yea,” Jetson’s second appearance on the album, more closely resembles the work Wheezy and P’ierre Bourne put in on Young Thug’s So Much Fun. Kash also manages a serviceable enough impression of Thugger on the few tracks in this vein, but his best mode is when he ditches Atlanta’s signature cartoon trap sound entirely.

“Kash App,” a surefire fan-favorite collab with Mulatto, secures the first of several New Orleans Bounce-influenced beats by Baby Breeze and ZachOnTheTrack on the album. Over the uptempo production, Kash evokes the king of all booty shake records, Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up,” with both sonic callbacks from his collaborators and a “wobbledy-wobbledy” for good measure. However, Mulatto steals the show, not only balancing his testosterone-fueled perspective with a feminine counterpoint but also out-boasting him from her opening lines: “I need the CashApp ‘fore I make that ass clap / Bet when he be layin’ with his bitch he havin’ flashbacks.”

Another standout courtesy of Breeze and Zach is “Dance On The Dick,” a high-speed twerker almost guaranteed to spark a social media dance challenge. Were the strip clubs not shut down by a global pandemic, this would be the track to incite dollar-bill flurries and the most impressive displays of side-to-side booty work and the most enthusiastic drops. This is where Kash appears to be having — and provoking — the most fun. While it’s fun to hear his breezy interpretation of the Thugger moan, his staccato delivery is more propulsive, even if it does sound slightly derivative of DaBaby.

With few songs clocking in at over three minutes, Kash has just enough time to showcase his versatility without wearing out his welcome — or his limited subject matter. Kash’s lyrics can sometimes lean into being too simplistic and there isn’t much variation beyond anthems dedicated to tricking off on women, having sex with women, or the one song about getting his heart broken by women, “Thug Cry.” And this sequence on “Dance On The Dick” is downright cringey: “She’s a hottie, plus she got a body / And she do pilates, ride the dick like a Ducati / I like some wasabi, Chinese bitch, I call her taki.”

But overall, Kash’s splashy debut exhibits all the hallmarks of a natural hitmaker. He doesn’t push the boundaries much, with nearly every song on the album offering a variation on a proven formula (acoustic guitar + 808s, flute + 808s, late-’90s classic samples), but he’s skilled enough as a songwriter to overcome the limitations of his narrow range of topics and derivative beats and flows. He’ll need to expand his repertoire if he wants to really stick around but with LVRN, he’s got the right management team behind him to ensure he’ll make the right moves to maximize his potential. Sometimes, less is more, and as long as he can continue to create interesting, engaging, and distinctive spins with a limited palette, he’ll keep proving that aphorism to be accurate.

Kash Only is out now via LVRN/Interscope. Get it here.

At the end of last September, regular subscribers of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert received an unscheduled bonus episode titled simply, “Day 7.” Based on the title and the language that fans of Shepard’s podcast have become accustomed to over the years, it wasn’t difficult to discern what the episode would be about that morning. Shepard had relapsed.

Except for who it was and the way it played out publicly on a very popular podcast, Shepard’s story was not particularly unusual. He got in a motorcycle accident earlier in 2020, and he was prescribed pills for the pain. He started saving them in order to take two at a time so that he could get high. Eventually, he began buying pills to augment his prescription. Early on during the pandemic, Shepard lied about his prescription drug use to his wife, Kristen Bell; he also lied to his podcast producer, Monica Padman; and he even lied to his AA group. He accepted the cake for his 16th year of sobriety while high.

In the end, Shepard came clean on “Day 7” because of the themes of transparency and honesty that have made his podcast so popular. However, as he told Ellen Degeneres on her Tuesday episode, he really “did not want” to go public with his relapse “at all.” He worried about the embarrassment of the revelation, but he also had “bizarre fears” about losing his podcast.

“I have sponsors on my show — is that something that could cost me money financially?” he wondered.

In the end, however, the fear of losing his audience by not being honest is what drove him to come clean. “I get so much esteem out of being someone who’s vocally sober,” he told DeGeneres. “And I have people who write me — ‘I’m month one’ or ‘I’m week two’ — and I love that. That’s my favorite thing about being in public, and so I was just terrified I would lose that. I really cherish that.”

A friend, however, showed Shepard how to see the confession in a new light. “If your real goal is to help people,” his friend told him, “it’s not very helpful that you’re 16 years sober and married to Kristen Bell. In fact, that probably makes their life worse. So the fact that you just fell, that’s the actual value.” Once Shepard was able to gain that perspective, “it got a lot easier.”

The Armchair Expert, meanwhile, continues on. Yesterday, Justin Timberlake was the guest on Shepard’s 286th episode.

Andrew Wiggins has never managed to live up to the hype that surrounded him as a prospect coming into the 2014 NBA Draft when he was taken first overall. Wiggins was, briefly, a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers before being traded that same summer to the Minnesota Timberwolves as a centerpiece of the Kevin Love trade after LeBron James returned home.

In the years since, Wiggins has been solid if unspectacular, but most importantly, even when paired with fellow top pick Karl-Anthony Towns, the winning never came consistently in Minnesota. Wiggins was dealt to the Warriors last season in the D’Angelo Russell trade, partially as a reclamation project and partially as a salary dump from Minnesota. Thus far this season, Wiggins isn’t producing at the raw level he did in his best years in Minnesota, averaging 17.8 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game, but his efficiency has seen a jump — most notably shooting 40 percent from three — and he’s embraced his role as a secondary weapon alongside Stephen Curry.

On Monday night, Wiggins had 23 points in a win over his old squad, and after the game was asked about the emotions of facing Minnesota as well as why he seems to feel so comfortable in Golden State — during which he illuminated some things he seemed to think were differences in the team cultures.

Wiggins citing the Warriors “winning culture” over and over, as well as noting how they’re “organized” and “straightforward” with players certainly seemed like a bit more than just fawning praise on his new club. It also seemed to be a point about the problems the Timberwolves have as an organization, and why they haven’t been able to establish a winning culture of their own. While many saw this as Wiggins burying his old team, the fact of the matter is, he’s not wrong. These aren’t new critiques of what goes on in Minnesota, and while Wiggins was once considered part of the problem there, we have heard all of these things before when Jimmy Butler was pushing his way out.

It surely won’t endear Wiggins to the Wolves fanbase, but it’s also pretty much an accurate assessment of the uphill climb still facing Minnesota to try and establish an identity and a culture. For Wiggins, he’s gotten to see what that looks like now in Golden State, where roles are more defined and there’s an expectation of accountability across the board, including from players in the locker room. It’s clear that’s left an imprint on Wiggins and has him excited about his new digs.

Chris Hemsworth shared a photo commemorating the first day of shooting on the highly anticipated Thor: Love and Thunder, but the actor did more than just build up hype for his latest Marvel adventure. In a heartfelt post, Hemsworth endorsed efforts to change the date for “Australia Day,” which coincided with the start of filming on Love and Thunder. The national holiday was enacted in 1994 but has faced significant pushback from indigenous communities who have dubbed the event “Invasion Day” due to its celebration of the arrival of the British First Fleet. Using his Marvel clout, Hemsworth endorsed efforts to find a day that all Australians can join together and honor their country without condoning the evils of colonization. Via Instagram:

Many see January 26th as a date signifying the beginning of dispossession, disease epidemics, frontier violence, destruction of culture, exploitation, abuse, separation of families and subjection to policies of extreme social control. Let’s begin the healing and stand together in unity and support with our First Nations people with solidarity and compassion. Let’s find a date where all Australians can celebrate this beautiful country together.

In the photos shared the Thor star, he’s joined by Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi as the two take place in a “Welcome to Country” ceremony performed by aboriginal dancers.

You can see Hemsworth’s Instagram post below:

Chris Pratt is also in country to reprise his role of Star-Lord and keep his hilarious rivalry with Thor going following the events of Avengers: Endgame, and there are reports that even more cast members from the Guardians of the Galaxy are quarantining in Australia to shoot cameos for the film.

(Via Chris Hemsworth on Instagram)

No one is enjoying the arrival of the Biden administration more than Dr. Anthony Fauci.

After a year of serving under Trump’s regime, Fauci’s once again making press appearances where he seems practically giddy at the thought of a Commander-in-Chief who believes in science and values facts over propaganda. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has advised seven U.S. presidents during various health crises, but now, with Trump out of office, he’s getting candid about how difficult it was to manage the COVID-19 outbreak under the reality TV star’s administration.

Fauci, who received death threats from Trump supporters and seemed to constantly be in President Trump’s crosshairs for refusing to downplay the pandemic, told the New York Times that his “anxiety” started to escalate when New York City was hit with an onslaught of cases and Trump wanted to downplay the numbers:

“It coincided very much with the rapid escalation of cases in the northeastern part of the country, particularly the New York metropolitan area. I would try to express the gravity of the situation, and the response of the president was always leaning toward, ‘Well, it’s not that bad, right?’ And I would say, ‘Yes, it is that bad.’ It was almost a reflex response, trying to coax you to minimize it. Not saying, ‘I want you to minimize it,’ but, ‘Oh, really, was it that bad?”

Fauci began to grow even more concerned over Trump’s tendency to believe anecdotes from his business partners rather than the scientifically-proven data Fauci was giving him:

“The other thing that made me really concerned was, it was clear that he was getting input from people who were calling him up, I don’t know who, people he knew from business, saying, ‘Hey, I heard about this drug, isn’t it great?’ or, ‘Boy, this convalescent plasma is really phenomenal’ And I would try to, you know, calmly explain that you find out if something works by doing an appropriate clinical trial; you get the information, you give it a peer review. And he’d say, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this stuff really works.’ He would take just as seriously their opinion — based on no data, just anecdote — that something might really be important. It wasn’t just hydroxychloroquine, it was a variety of alternative-medicine-type approaches. It was always, ‘A guy called me up, a friend of mine from blah, blah, blah.’ That’s when my anxiety started to escalate.”

Basically, Trump sounds like everyone’s conservative suburban aunt who spends too much time on Facebook and WebMD, but instead of just spewing eye-rolling nonsense over your family’s monthly Zoom call, he was telling millions of American’s to inject bleach into their veins or to start taking drugs with dangerous side effects. That’s when Fauci knew things were bad.

“I just said, ‘Oh my goodness gracious.’ I could just see what’s going to happen,” Fauci told CNN about Trump’s suggestion that disinfectant might fight the virus. “You’re going to have people who hear that from the President and they’re going to start doing dangerous and foolish things, which is the reason why, immediately, those of us who were not there said, ‘This is something you should not do.’ Be very explicit. The (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) came out, I think, the next day and put in one of their publications, ‘Do not do this.’”

The good news? Now that Biden is in office, things seem to be looking up for Fauci and the virology experts that work for him. He’s already admitted how “liberating” it’s been to give White House press briefings that focus solely on facts and data, and the new administration seems intent on ramping up the government’s response to the pandemic, which continues to ravage nearly every part of the country.

We’ve all been suffering, but we’ll give Fauci this win. He deserves it.

(Via New York Times & CNN)

Considering last year was a curveball that no one expected, 2021 seems destined to deliver double the music we hoped for in 2020. That is, if pop stars who are happy to do it themselves have anything to do with it. Yes, pop has traditionally been the genre of sold-out stadium shows and producer-packed studio sessions, but with the rise of laptop production, TikTok fanbases, and an eager young audience stuck at home and looking for distraction, bedroom pop is back in a big way. And just because it was made at home doesn’t mean some of these stars aren’t headed for massive stages, either.

As we all navigate the transition between pandemic life and post-quarantine bliss, there’s going to be a sweet spot for artists who aren’t quite supernovas but were never meant for the world of indie after all. Expect the barriers that Billie Eilish broke down to change a lot about what we expect from female stars, whether that’s how they sing or how they look, act, and dress, and there’s lots of other changes on the horizon, too. Like self-correction for diversity and inclusion of all genders and races, and a creeping hint of rock and other forgotten sounds making their way back into the mainstream. So whether they’re collaborating with established icons, blowing up on social media, or changing the way we think about a trip to the DMV, here are our picks for rising pop stars to watch this year.

Olivia Rodrigo

Olivia Rodrigo barely needs an introduction anymore. In just a few short weeks, Olivia Rodrigo went from a well-known Disney+ actress in High School Musical: The Series: The Musical to one of the most exciting voices pop music has heard in years. With her debut single “Drivers License,” Olivia broke Spotify records, earned co-signs from other massive stars like Taylor Swift, Halsey, and Cardi B, and ignited the kind of music industry gossip that only fuels the fire when it comes to new stars. With her first EP slated for sometime in the next few months and a dedicated following on TikTok that’s growing by the minute, Olivia isn’t just a rising pop star to watch, she’s the one to watch.

Jessia

This Vancouver songwriter who is breaking out in a big way thanks to streaming, and thanks to the TikTok-first snippet of a frustrated declaration “I’m Not Pretty,” that rejected the impossible beauty standards women are expected to conform to. When Jessia turned those viral snippets into a full-length track, it became the kind of hit that turned heads at Spotify. Spotify Canada senior editor Gregg Henderson told Hits Daily Double that his team had a close eye on the unsigned artist. “We were instantly blown away by ‘I’m Not Pretty,’” he said. “We added it to various Canadian pop playlists upon the song’s release on 1/8 and quickly saw that it was reacting with fans and had big potential. We worked closely with our Global Hits team, who then added the song to our biggest playlist, Today’s Top Hits, as well as putting Jessia on the cover of Pop Rising. We always strive to spotlight local emerging artists on a global level and are excited for fans around the world to discover Jessia through Spotify’s worldwide reach.”

Ashnikko

What if Suicide Squad was a pop star? Then it would be Ashnikko, a twenty-something musician raised in North Carolina on a steady diet of country music, Slipknot, and M.I.A who moved to Estonia with her family during high school. Speaking of Suicide Squad, one of Ashnikko’s first big industry looks was when a song she co-wrote for Doja Cat, “Boss Bitch,” was included on the all-female Birds Of Prey soundtrack in early 2020. Before that, she was going viral on her own in with the Yung Baby Tate-featuring standout single “Stupid” in 2019, while opening for Danny Brown and appearing on Brooke Candy’s debut album, Sexorcism. More recently, she collaborated with Grimes on the bubblegum electroclash track “Cry,” which appears on her early January 2021 released Demidevil. That project also includes Kelis and Princess Nokia, if you needed any more convincing. With her colorful, Tokyo-influenced hair, raunchy rap lyrics, and lots of bubblegum giggling, Ashnikko is poised to be pop’s next anti-heroine. Deal with it.

Ingrid Andress

Country’s latest crossover star is a Colorado songwriting sensation who took Nashville by storm — and didn’t stop there. Her breakout hit “More Hearts Than Mine” went to No. 3 on the Country Airplay charts and also hit No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100, establishing it as the kind brilliant story-song that supersedes genre. Andress’ Atlantic records debut, Lady Like, went on to break streaming records as the biggest debut by a female country artist, doubling down on her potential as the next country artist to break into the mainstream, walking in the footsteps of other pop-leaning artists like Kacey Musgraves and Taylor Swift. And when your name is getting mentioned in that company, who cares about genre anyway?

Joshua Bassett

One of the after-effects of Olivia Rodrigo’s sensational songwriting is that the person the song is rumored to be about — her High School Musical: The Musical: The Series co-star, Joshua Bassett — has been drawn into the spotlight as well. Not like he wanted to be anywhere else! Bassett is now rumored to be dating another Disney+ star, Sabrina Carpenter, but the gist of his own 2021 single is that somebody isn’t telling the truth about him. “Lie Lie Lie” might not totally make sense as a response to “Drivers License” (and let’s hope for his sake that it’s not because none of us can look into Olivia’s misty eyes and believe she’s lying), but it’s got a killer hook and the kind of bouncy, golden melody that is working for male pop stars these days. If he can give us a couple more tracks as good as this new one, Josh is well on his way to a solo career of his own.

Jensen McRae

Jensen McRae has been on the radar of LA tastemakers for quite some time now, even is she’s not big enough to have her own Wikipedia page yet. But if she did, the first entry would probably be this uber viral “cover” she made of a Phoebe Bridgers song summing up a very 2021 experience of hooking up in a car, in line to get a COVID-19 vaccine at Dodger Stadium. Please don’t stop at the hilarious social media content though, McRae’s own original music is just as stellar, particularly the standout “Wolves,” which has over a million streams on Spotify since release last spring. The song is about the psychic violence women face at the hands of men, a chilling reflection set against a beautiful melody, with devastating lines like “I was 19, still fun at parties.” McRae’s songwriting doesn’t just evoke Phoebe, but elements of other greats — the pathos of Mitski, the deadpan blues of Soccer Mommy — to let us into her universe. If I had a label in 2021, this is who I would sign. She’s said on Twitter that an album is coming this year, so keep an eye out for more music.

Sasha Sloan

At 19, Sasha Sloan moved to Los Angeles to be a songwriter. A few short years later, she was on national television performing “Older” on The Late Show With Steven Colbert. Working with DJs like Kaskade and Kygo as a featured vocalist, Sloan co-wrote tracks for Camila Cabello (“OMG” and “Never Be The Same”) and worked with Charli XCX (“Track 10” off Pop 2), before releasing her own debut EPs Sad Girl and Loser in 2018, and disrupted the self-deprecating theme in 2019 with a third EP called Self Portrait. With one foot in the EDM world and another in the realm of soft songwriting, on her debut full-length, last year’s Only Child, she finally began to meld the two, bringing whispers of a drop and other energy-shifting elements to sparse, acoustic tracks. Recently, she’s collaborated with Charlie Puth on a remix of Only Child‘s cheeky standout “Is It Just Me?” and the vocal chemistry between these two might finally land Sloan a hit of her own. In the meantime, if you’re looking for 2020 gems that got overlooked, her debut is definitely one — and it’s more than likely the follow-up will be even better.

Alaina Castillo

When I interviewed Alaina Castillo last March, she was already becoming a global superstar off the strength of her moody, mesmerizing songs, influenced by hymns and Latin music. Hearing Alaina’s voice and her penchant for mixing R&B with both trap and vocal runs, it’s impossible not to see her as the natural heir to Ariana Grande’s throne, and she’s just continued building her in the last year, releasing her mostly acoustic EP The Voicenotes in English and Spanish, Mensajes De Voz, and slowly tackling more adult themes in more recent singles. Plenty of emerging artists decided to put most of their plans on hold last year, and odds are Alaina will have a lot of new music dropping in 2021.

Holly Humberstone

Nobody does haunting like the British, and Holly Humberstone nails bluesy, end-of-the-road ballads like Adele before her, with a touch of Lorde’s itchy midnight percussion thrown in for good measure. Though Humberstone came up performing during intermissions at Lewis Capaldi shows, she’s heads and shoulders above him in both material and delivery, and her debut EP, last summer’s Falling Asleep At The Wheel, hit like a ton of glass bricks. The songs are both blocky and iridescent, lightweight but strong enough to build a career upon. “Overkill” has enough indie rock in it to perk up fans who have been missing guitars in the pop world, but my enthusiasm for the title track, “Falling Asleep At The Wheel,” hasn’t diminished at all since I heard it last August. Add in a Radiohead cover, and a self-deprecating Instagram presence, and Holly’s future success is all but clinched. While I hope we get more new music from her soon, I have a feeling this is the kind of artist who will make us all remember why live shows are so essential to this business.

Remi Wolf

Last summer, Remi Wolf’s “Monte Carlo” became an inescapable earworm — a song about driving around and flexing for no reason was the perfect soundtrack for a time when most people had little to do but drive around. Game recognize game, and fellow high-pitched, glitterati-pop connoisseur Tune-Yards hopped on a remix to show her appreciation for the song’s brilliance. With a history as a former American Idol contestant, a remix of her track “Hello Hello Hello” appearing in an iPhone commercial, and with her latest EP, I’m Allergic To Dogs! released through Island Records, it’s only a matter of time until Remi is a household name. And I’m looking forward to plenty more I Love Lucy references in her subsequent hits.

Claud (Formerly Toast)

Endorsed by Phoebe Bridgers and friends with Clairo, what more does a rising indie songwriter need? How about dreamy hooks, conversational verses, and a vulnerability that so many artists try to reach but never really achieve? Fans of King Princess will love these sad subjects done up in sparkling pop melodies, and the chance to hear from a queer artist grappling with issues of identity, isolation, rejection, and, eventually, self-sufficiency. Their debut album Super Monster is the first release on Bridgers’ new label imprint, Saddest Factory Records, and is already shaping up to be one of 2021’s early gems. Look for it dropping in mid-February, right before Valentine’s Day, and get used to hearing about Claud Mintz — their unassuming songwriting just grows and grows with every listen.

Tate McRae

It’s going to be impossible to talk about incoming pop stars for a few years without mentioning Billie Eilish, and Tate McRae is the entry on this list that is the most directly connected to Billie and her crew. The 17-year-old Canadian star has been in the entertainment industry for years now, dancing on Justin Bieber’s Purpose tour, appearing on So You Think You Can Dance (and placing third!) at the tender age of 12, all while populating her own Youtube channel with dance videos and songs since 2011. One of those songs, “One Day,” broke out in a big way in 2017, and eventually led to RCA Records signing her in 2019. She released the All the Things I Never Said EP in late 2019, featuring lead single “Tear Myself Apart,” co-written with Billie and Finneas. But things are moving so fast for Tate now that her 2020 material — even the TikTok hit “You Broke Me First” — is already being eclipsed by her latest material, namely “Rubberband,” which only came out five days ago and already hit well over a million views. Since Tate came up as a dancer first, expect that to tie into her songwriting and music videos in a way that sets her apart from most modern pop stars.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After the cast of Stranger Things received breakout success for their roles in the popular Netflix series, many of them went on to release music. Joe Keery, who portrays Steve Harrington in the show, is currently making music under the moniker Djo and is a former member of Post Animal. Maya Hawke, who portrays Robin, released her debut album Blush last year. And after his previous band Calpurnia broke up, Finn Wolfhard (aka Mike Wheeler on Stranger Things) has been releasing music with his childhood friend under the band name The Aubreys.

The Aubreys released their debut EP Soda & Pie back in 2020, but it didn’t take long for them to share even more playful tunes. They teamed up with indie band Lunar Vacation earlier this month for the chilled-out track “No Offerings” and they’ve now returned with a cutesy video.

Speaking about the visual’s creation, Wolfhard, who edited the animation, described its creation process:

“We were looking for a way to do a video for the song without being in the same room all together. So I did some research on animated videos in the public domain. I found this video, and thought it was really great. Clay Frankel of the band Twin Peaks was the person to tell me to invert the colors and make it look trippy and weird to make it a little more interesting. I’m excited for people to see it!”

Watch The Aubreys’ “No Offerings” video above.