10 New Artists To Listen To If You Like Phoebe Bridgers
From intimate folk to experimental rock, here are ten emerging artists Phoebe Bridgers fans should have on their radar.
Phoebe Bridgers fever is well and truly taking over in the lead-up to her long-awaited third album. Six years on from Punisher, the Los Angeles songwriter has become one of the defining artists of her generation, inspiring countless musicians with her ability to turn intensely personal experiences into songs that somehow feel universal. Heartbreak, grief, complicated relationships, family and the general messiness of being alive have always been at the centre of Bridgers’ writing, delivered with a disarming intimacy that can make even her biggest songs feel like they’re being sung directly to you.
So, what better time to turn the spotlight towards some of our favourite emerging artists working within a similar world? The ten musicians below aren’t Phoebe Bridgers clones, nor would we want them to be. Some lean towards folk, others towards indie rock, psychedelia or more experimental territory. What connects them is an ability to take lived experience and transform it into music that feels deeply personal and distinctly their own.
From artists releasing their very first singles to songwriters beginning to attract considerably wider attention, these are ten new artists we think Phoebe Bridgers fans should be listening to.
Glass Eel
Emerging from South East London’s DIY scene, Glass Eel is the project of songwriter Alice, whose confessional indie folk draws on grunge, psychedelia, mythology and traditional storytelling. There’s an emotional rawness to her music that feels especially powerful on debut single ‘The Line’, a sparse and quietly devastating song about the uneasy space between collapse and resilience. Bob Dylan remains one of her biggest songwriting influences, but Glass Eel’s deeply introspective approach gives those folk foundations a distinctly contemporary weight.
Jordan Patterson
Raised in California’s San Fernando Valley, Jordan Patterson takes the emotional directness of soul music and filters it through experimental folk, rock and the sounds she discovered as a teenager. Now signed to Secretly Canadian, Patterson is a writer at heart, filling her songs with longing, desire and the contradictions that come with relationships. Her recent Songs From A Valley Girl EP pushes beyond the solitude of her earlier work, finding humour and movement within those feelings without sacrificing their vulnerability.
Folk Bitch Trio
If you like Phoebe Bridgers, Folk Bitch Trio might be one of the most obvious new bands to explore. The Melbourne group describe their music as a mixture of folk, alt-indie-rock, confessional songwriting and three-part harmony, with influences including Gillian Welch, Wilco, Lucinda Williams and Aldous Harding. Their songs are exposed and delicately arranged, with three distinct songwriting voices coming together through some genuinely gorgeous harmonies. Perhaps the strongest endorsement comes from Bridgers herself, who once described their sound as “boygenius if it was from the 40’s or something.”
Ea Othilde
At just 21, Oslo songwriter Ea Othilde has already been releasing music for several years, turning intensely personal experiences into understated alternative rock. Her recent EP You’ll Leave the City pushes her sound into rawer, guitar-driven territory, incorporating touches of shoegaze while retaining the emotional weight at the heart of her songwriting. Relationships, longing and insecurity all find their way into songs that Othilde describes as a means of processing her emotions. Elliott Smith is a particularly important influence, alongside PJ Harvey and Radiohead, placing Othilde within a lineage of deeply personal songwriters who find power in restraint as much as volume.
Zoh Amba
Having established themselves as a saxophonist within New York’s experimental scene, Zoh Amba takes a striking turn towards emotionally charged, guitar-led songwriting on their Matador debut Eyes Full. Drawing on their upbringing in Kingsport, Tennessee, Amba moves between loose acoustic folk, blues and bursts of distorted guitar while writing about working-class life, identity and the complicated relationship we have with home. Recorded live without overdubs alongside guitarist Kevin Hyland and drummer Jim White, the record has a rawness that suits Amba’s emotional storytelling, moving easily between restraint and sudden flashes of noise.
Jo From School
London-based Jo From School pairs intimate, conversational songwriting with an indie-folk sound that can suddenly become considerably more muscular. There’s an appealing immediacy to her writing, with Jo preferring to keep lyrics and melodies close to their original thought instead of endlessly refining them. Ahead of debut EP Grace, Flair & Distance, she has already supported Skullcrusher and worked with producer Rich Cooper, whose credits include Billie Marten and CMAT. Her influences stretch much further than folk, though, taking in everything from Fog Lake to Boards of Canada and Squarepusher, giving her quietly vulnerable songs a more playful, unpredictable edge.
Essence Martins
London singer-songwriter Essence Martins writes with a striking emotional clarity, turning relationships, heartbreak, nostalgia and the uneasy passage of time into songs that feel increasingly like diary entries. That emotional honesty is matched by a broad musical palette shaped by folk, soul and alternative pop, with current favourites including Clairo, Laura Marling, Arlo Parks, Billie Marten and Lizzy McAlpine. Martins is quickly finding an audience for songs that reveal more of herself with each release.
Elanor Moss
Elanor Moss occupies the quieter, stranger end of the singer-songwriter spectrum. The London-based artist describes her music as “psych-folk”, pairing intimate guitar-led songwriting with understated chamber arrangements and an interest in character, memory and interiority. Her debut album The Knife, The Needle was shaped by the sparse beauty of artists including Nick Drake and Judee Sill, while Moss approaches her lyrics through what she calls a “fictional I”, transforming experiences from her own life into detailed stories and characters. It gives her songs an unusual closeness, allowing Moss to draw from lived experience without being bound to autobiography and to build a peculiar little world entirely of her own.
Biita Houdei
Raised in rural Missouri and now based in the Catskills, Biita Houdei makes intimate folk music that feels instinctive and unforced. Her recent single ‘Life Inside The Hourglass’, produced by Haley Heynderickx, wraps warm, psychedelic textures around reflections on adolescence, regret, forgiveness and the uncomfortable speed at which time passes. Houdei says she rarely edits her songs once they have been written, allowing melodies and lyrics to arrive naturally and preserving the feeling that initially inspired them. The result is folk music with a real sense of closeness, filtered through a warmer, earthier strain of psychedelia that makes even Houdei’s most reflective songs feel alive and tactile.
Evelyn Gray
London-based Evelyn Gray turns personal experiences into elaborate fictional worlds. A member of Tapir!, her solo project I Am Building A House imagines the lives of characters inhabiting an abandoned apartment block, using them to explore ideas around communication, identity, housing and change. Debut single ‘Clotheslines’ emerged from a period of frustration and confusion, combining Gray’s narrative songwriting with electronic elements constructed from acoustic samples. There’s a similar emotional openness to Phoebe Bridgers here, but Gray takes it somewhere more theatrical and conceptual, using fictional characters as a means of making sense of her own experiences.
