Top 5 DIY Artists on the Rise

The only consistent trend in the music industry is inconsistency. Genres, equipment, technology, and the business itself are constantly changing and evolving. And the newest trend is do-it-yourself artistry. More and more artists are going it alone, without the help of a record label, or sticking to smaller, independent labels. And they’re doing well. We wanted to highlight a few successful DIY artists you should keep an eye on.

1. KING

This all-female alternative R&B trio consisting of twins Amber and Paris Strother and Anita Bias has been turning heads since 2011. They saw quick success due to the support of fellow artists Erykah Badu and Questlove. They even opened for Prince! KING released music slowly and purposefully over the next five years before dropping their first full length album, We Are KING, in 2016. The album, released entirely independently, was nominated for a Grammy. Most recently, KING performed with an orchestral ensemble in Los Angeles in October 2019.

2. girl in red

We love to see successful women making their own way in the industry. girl in red’s indie sound is making waves within the genre. She broke out only two years ago with a single in 2018, and has since released two EPs with a full-length album on the way. Ones to Watch describes her as having “a modest demeanor”, which makes her approachable and likable. Anything but shy, girl in red is a “fiercely outspoken member of the LGBTQ community”, and her songs touch on topics from her sexuality to seasonal depression. We’re so excited to see what she does next.

3. Los Retros

If you’re looking for an artist who has experience, look no further than Los Retros, AKA Mauri Tapia.. Ones to Watch claims that Tapia started borrowing his brother’s guitar at the young age of eight years old, and that he’s been putting his musical works up on the internet since the age of 16. Now, still only 19-years-old, Los Retros has signed to an independent label and is ready to take the world by storm. He finds inspiration everywhere from soft-rock, Central and South American pop, and even American rock from the 70’s and 80’s. His unique sound has caught the attention of music blog site The FADER, and we can absolutely see why.

4. Beabadoobee

An incredible part of the DIY and independent artist scene is that no one has to fit in the bubble of one genre. Artists can pull inspiration from every side of the music industry and create one musical masterpiece. Ones to Watch describes beabadoobee’s sound as a blend of “all the melancholy of any of the best bedroom-pop recordings with the raw edge of lo-fi ‘90s indie rock”. Beabadoobee is certainly on an upward climb, with a Rolling Stone interview and a spot in the famous “NOW That’s What I Call Music” collection under her belt. Her debut single, “Coffee” was a song she wrote on a whim and wanted to share with her friends. Since she uploaded it, it has been sampled by Canadian rapper Powfu and remixed with Blink-182, as well as over 4 billion plays in just one month thanks to TikTok.

5. Brockhampton

Brockhampton might be the actual epitome of DIY artistry. The band, which consists of a whopping fourteen members, released eleven viral music videos in just one year, and they did every bit of it themselves. They are ambitious, to say the very least. In 2017, they released three entire albums in a six month span. The albums were intended as a trilogy called Saturation, and The Verge discusses the fact that the group released a “self-funded, feature-length movie” to “celebrate the end of the Saturation trilogy”. The film was intended to tie together all of the music videos that had already been released by this point. While a group of fourteen men who mostly refer to themselves as rappers might not sound like the makings of a boy band, that’s exactly what the members of Brockhampton think of themselves as. It just goes to show that when you do everything yourself, you can be whatever you want to be!