EKHO Sonic Chill #2

San Francisco trip-hop/dream-pop group around married couple Rebecca and Ryan Coseboom — 4AD-style vocals over industrial-tinged, string-laced downtempo, somewhere between Portishead and Lamb. "I'll Carry You," from Wiser (2001), revisits a song from their 1998 debut We Only Love You. The unexpected credit on their résumé: their remix of Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" went No.1 on the Billboard club chart, and they've worked with DJ Shadow, No Doubt and John Cale. They disbanded in 2008, when the Cosebooms continued as Stripmall Architecture, then reunited in late 2015 and released Brutalism for Lovers in 2019.

Four-piece from London — Matt West, Ed Smith, Paul Brown and Sam Cunnington — who came together in Hackney Wick in 2013. Patient, synth-heavy electronic pop leaning on modular gear and a techno sense of pace, more hypnotic drift than verse-chorus. Infinite Games was made almost entirely DIY over about a year in their own windowless Hackney Wick studio. "Get Light" closes the record and grew out of a forgotten demo of piano chords the band rediscovered and built the song on; they've said the lyric was shaped by The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Later releases include the album Black Blossom (2022) and the EP Nothing Is Wasted (2025).

London-born, Bristol-raised, her voice defined trip-hop's high-water mark — Tricky found her singing on a wall near his house in 1993 and she became the lead voice of Maxinquaye. Quixotic (2003), her solo debut, was Mercury-nominated and is a genuinely odd, star-studded record: Josh Homme on guitar, Mark Lanegan on vocals, David Holmes producing a track and Bond composer David Arnold arranging strings. "Sandpaper Kisses" has had a long afterlife — it appeared in the 2005 game Fahrenheit, was covered by Stephen Marley, and was sampled by The Weeknd on "The Birds (Pt. 2)." Craft reissued Quixotic in 2024 with a previously unreleased alternate mix of this song.

The other end of the same band — "Spells" is a self-produced early track first posted to Bandcamp in September 2014, before any studio gloss set in, from a three-song EP alongside "Evening Star" and "Night Verses." Ryan Clapham and Paul Davis, childhood friends writing together since their teens, found Michelle Joy through a Craigslist ad she had posted looking for a band that needed a singer; the band formed in 2013. Early writers pegged the sound as "future boogie." The Netflix sync that broke them, "Fire for You" in Never Have I Ever, came in 2020.

Yppah is Joe Corrales Jr., a Texas-raised, Long Beach producer running hip-hop drum programming through a My Bloody Valentine haze. Eighty One (2012) is his third Ninja Tune album and his warmest — the title is simply the year he was born, and it was written during surf trips to Galveston that hit him hard enough to move him to the California coast mid-record. Guest Anomie Belle is a Seattle-based, classically trained violinist who loops violin, guitar, keys and vocals live; the two met on Yppah's 2010 tour with Bonobo. Lil Peep later sampled Yppah's "Never Mess With Sunday" for "Star Shopping." Yppah's most recent album is Sunset in the Deep End (2020).

First played live in Brussels in December 1995, it took more than twenty years to reach a studio album. They tried and abandoned it repeatedly — keyboard-loop attempts during OK Computer, electronic versions in the Kid A sessions whose parts got recycled into "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" — with Thom Yorke resisting a plain acoustic take, admitting "one of my mistakes is dismissing things because they're simple." The definitive version closes A Moon Shaped Pool as a hushed piano piece built from multiple overdubbed pianos playing polyrhythmically against each other. Yorke has said the "lollipops and crisps" line came from a story about a child left alone surviving on snacks.

LA duo Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno, who started in 2009 making fuzzy, sun-bleached lo-fi and grew into widescreen pop. California Nights (2015) was the big-budget swerve, recorded with Wally Gagel. The title track is the outlier even on that record — a slow, narcotic shoegaze crawl Cosentino almost didn't show the band: "I remember sending it to the guys and worrying they might not like it and would think it was too weird." She has pushed back on the obvious reading, saying the song "is about California, but it's also NOT specifically about California." The band went on indefinite hiatus in May 2023.

Sloan Struble, a one-man indie-pop operation from Aledo, Texas, who writes, plays, produces and mixes everything himself. Fuzzybrain was recorded in his bedroom between his senior year of high school and his freshman year at UT Austin, and self-released in 2018. A textbook sleeper hit: the single sat largely ignored for two years, then took off in 2020 after Emma Chamberlain featured it, jumping from roughly 10 million to 100 million streams inside a year; it was later certified 2× Platinum in the US. He then signed to Polydor for the self-titled Dayglow (2024), expanded as Superbloom (2025).

Four-piece from Norman, Oklahoma formed in 2010 around Ryan Lindsey, drifting from garage rock toward shoegaze since Double Vanity (2016). Natural Pleasure (2025) is their fifth album and first in seven years, recorded in fits and starts between 2020 and 2025 while Lindsey became a father — four of its tracks use an acoustic guitar that belonged to his own dad. Their earlier "Class Historian" has had an improbable second life in ads, the film Vacation, and Reservation Dogs.

Ernest Weatherly Greene Jr. of Perry, Georgia — the artist Pitchfork crowned the "Godfather of Chillwave." Sun-bleached synth-pop sung through tape wobble and reverb. Within and Without (2011), his debut LP, was produced by Ben H. Allen and debuted at No.26 on the Billboard 200; "Eyes Be Closed" opens it, with Mark Cobb on rototoms. Odd footnote: the album's cover photo later turned up in Cosmopolitan illustrating a piece on sex positions, which Greene noted "wasn't sexual at all and it wasn't supposed to be provocative." His fifth album, Notes from a Quiet Life, followed in 2024.

UK duo formed in 2002 by keyboardist Neil Cowley and music journalist Ben Mynott — downtempo built from live keys, dusty jazz and dub-adjacent electronics rather than pure sample collage. Two albums: this one (2002) and Voices from the Dust Bowl (2004). The surprise is what happened to Cowley afterwards: a classically trained pianist who played a Shostakovich concerto at ten, he went on to lead the Neil Cowley Trio and play the session piano on Adele's 21 — so the hands on this record are the hands on some of the biggest pop of the 2010s.

Swedish dream-pop group from Lund built around Johan Duncanson and Martin Larsson; the name comes from a former gas station turned radio repair shop. Soft-focus indie pop pushed through shoegaze fuzz and drum machines. "It's Personal" opens Pet Grief (2006), originally on Labrador — the band later recovered its masters and set up its own Just So! imprint for reissues. Sofia Coppola put three of their songs in Marie Antoinette the same year. In 2026 they announced a headline show at London's KOKO for 3 November, their first live date since 2018.

Transatlantic duo — singer/multi-instrumentalist Jordy from Kauaʻi and guitarist Ben from Manchester — who met by chance in Liverpool in 2022 and started in a basement. Shoegaze, grunge and minimalist psych-folk; reviewers reach for Big Thief and Angel Olsen. The self-titled debut (2025) was produced by Joel Pott and Flood across London, LA and a remote Welsh cabin, in sessions compressed into roughly three weeks after Jordy was unexpectedly deported mid-album over a visa problem — the original Liverpool basement demos, out-of-tune bits and all, were left in the final mixes. "Fever Dream" is one of two new songs on the deluxe edition.

The Bristol collective who effectively invented trip-hop — dub-weighted, slow, paranoid soul. 100th Window (2003) is the odd one out in their catalogue: Mushroom had left after Mezzanine and Daddy G opted out of the sessions, so it was made almost entirely by Robert "3D" Del Naja with Neil Davidge. Sinéad O'Connor sings on three of its tracks and co-wrote all three — the largest guest presence on the album. Massive Attack have become the industry's loudest voice on low-carbon touring, commissioning Tyndall Centre research in 2019 and turning down a Coachella 2025 offer. O'Connor died in July 2023, aged 56.

Anders Trentemøller, born 1972 in Vordingborg, Denmark and based in Copenhagen, came up through indie rock bands before turning to electronics. Cold and cinematic — minimal techno bleeding into shoegaze and darkwave. The Last Resort (2006) was his debut and remains the landmark, winning Danish Music Awards for Electronica Release and Producer of the Year. He's also one of the era's most in-demand remixers — Röyksopp, The Knife, Depeche Mode — with a Grammy nod for his Franz Ferdinand remix. His album Dreamweaver followed in 2024, and he announced a new album for 2026.

Blood Orange is Devonté Hynes, born in Ilford, East London to a Guyanese mother and a Sierra Leonean Creole father, New York-based since 2007 and a veteran of Test Icicles and Lightspeed Champion. Soft-edged avant-pop drawing on '80s R&B, quiet storm and gospel. Freetown Sound (2016) is named for his father's birthplace, the capital of Sierra Leone. Much of his résumé is other people's records — Solange, FKA twigs, Carly Rae Jepsen — plus film scores. Guest Empress Of is Lorely Rodriguez, an LA-born first-generation Honduran American. Hynes released Essex Honey in 2025; Empress Of's Dream House followed in 2026.

Damon Albarn's animated-band project with artist Jamie Hewlett; Little Dragon are a Gothenburg quartet fronted by Yukimi Nagano, formed in 1996. "Empire Ants" is a two-halves track — a hushed Albarn lullaby that blooms into Nagano's floating synth-funk — and Pitchfork called her contribution "airy, elusive, and amazingly beautiful." Albarn only found the band through his partner, and Nagano barely knew who Gorillaz were when she arrived at his London studio, later admitting "I definitely wasn't as charged as I perhaps might have been if I knew who they were." Gorillaz released The Mountain in February 2026.

Formed in Seattle in 2004 around Ben Bridwell, the sole constant member, after his previous group Carissa's Wierd fell apart. Big-sky American indie rock — reverbed guitars, Bridwell's high keening voice. Cease To Begin (2007) is the record that made them. The title is the name of the German-born NBA forward Detlef Schrempf, a three-time All-Star who played 16 seasons — but he is never mentioned in the lyrics, which are a bruised, tender goodbye. In 2025 they released Making Good Time, a covers EP with Iron & Wine.

Jenny-Bea Englishman, a Canadian singer who grew up in Walkerton, Ontario and moved to Toronto at sixteen; she was spotted performing at Toronto's Free Times Cafe and paired with producer Martin "Doc" McKinney, who wrote and produced the entire album. Breath From Another (1998) is lush late-'90s trip-hop — her voice over mellow basslines, jazzy trumpet and hip-hop drums. The genuinely surprising thread: that same Doc McKinney went on to become the primary architect of The Weeknd's sound, producing House of Balloons and executive-producing Starboy — so this record is a direct ancestor of modern Toronto R&B. Gold in Canada, Juno-nominated; her most recent widely noted appearance was a 2019 feature on the Black Eyed Peas' "4ever."

German-Norwegian band based in Berlin, led by Erlend Øye of Kings of Convenience with Marcin Öz, Sebastian Maschat and Daniel Nentwig. They began in 2003 as an outright electronic dance project and gradually stripped every programmed element out, ending up a live band playing clean, elastic, almost jazz-inflected minimal funk. "Don't Give Up" runs backwards into that past — Øye had been performing an electronic arrangement of it live with Röyksöpp as early as 2001, years before this guitar-band version existed. Broke up in 2014, reformed in 2019 and released the single "Serious" in 2020.

Formed in Folkestone, Kent in the mid-'90s around brothers Paul and Ross Godfrey, with vocalist Skye Edwards. The name is a joke compound of "MOR" (middle of the road) and "cheeba," which tells you everything about their mix of trip-hop, downtempo, soul and West Coast folk-rock. Charango (2002) was a UK top-ten return to form with guests including Slick Rick and Lambchop's Kurt Wagner. Odd footnote for this track: "Undress Me Now" was lined up as the album's third single and a promo video was actually shot, but the release was scrapped — so a video exists for a single that never came out. The band marked its 30th anniversary with the album Escape the Chaos in 2025.

UK-Estonian dream-pop trio in London — Iiris Vesik with Max Doohan and Sam Richards — who started as housemates jamming in South London, which is where the name comes from. Pitched-up vocals over flickering bass, hazy synths and soft percussion. "Forever" was their debut single (August 2019), from the EP Dream Forever In Glorious Stereo, which was framed around loving London while sometimes wanting to escape its mindset. Their debut album, portals//polarities, followed on Nettwerk on 26 September 2025.

Formed in Grangemouth, Scotland in 1979 — Robin Guthrie's effects-drenched guitar, Elizabeth Fraser's soprano often sung in invented words, Simon Raymonde on bass from 1983. They essentially invented dream pop and defined the 4AD house sound. Heaven or Las Vegas (1990) was their commercial peak at No.7 UK and was made under real strain: Fraser and Guthrie's daughter was born a year before release, Guthrie was deep in drug dependency and Raymonde's father died mid-sessions — and yet it's their warmest, most luminous record, and their last for 4AD. The band split in 1997; Fraser returned in 2022 with Sun's Signature, an EP made with Damon Reece.

London duo Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker, who trained as engineers at RAK Studios working on Pet Shop Boys and Robert Plant sessions. The name came from a bar called Cero Siete on the Honduran island of Utila — they used it on a 1997 Radiohead remix billed "the Zero 7 Mix" and it stuck. Simple Things (2001) is the touchstone downtempo record of its era, Mercury-nominated, and featured the voices of Sia, Sophie Barker and Mozez. "In The Waiting Line" became its most widely heard moment through Garden State. Their most recent album is In the Half Light (2024).

Anthony Gonzalez, from Antibes on the French Riviera, has run M83 solo since Nicolas Fromageau's departure — best known for widescreen, tears-in-the-synthesizer dream pop. Digital Shades Vol. 1 (2007) is the deliberate opposite: a largely instrumental ambient and drone set, the first of a side-series, written, composed and performed entirely by Gonzalez. "The highest journey" is the album's longest piece at 8:16, sitting where the record drifts furthest into pure texture. The series is patient — the sequel, DSVII, didn't arrive until 2019, twelve years later. In July 2026 M83 announced a tenth album, I Wrote You a Letter, for release in September 2026.

Tricky is Adrian Thaws of the Knowle West estate in Bristol, who came up through the Wild Bunch sound system and rapped on Massive Attack's Blue Lines. Maxinquaye (1995) hit No.3 in the UK and became the definitive trip-hop record — smoked-out and paranoid, with Martina Topley-Bird, then still a teenager, as its central voice; she recorded nearly all her vocals in single takes, calling the process "totally instinctive." "Overcome" is Tricky rebuilding his own contribution to Massive Attack's "Karmacoma" into something slower and more claustrophobic, over a sample of Shakespears Sister's "Moonchild." The album title is his mother's name — Maxine Quaye, who died when he was small.

Genuinely obscure, and apparently deliberately so — the Union EP appeared 3 March 2017 on Swedish indie label VÅRØ with "Gold" as its opening track, and almost nothing about the act is public. The Line of Best Fit, one of the few outlets to cover them, described a hazy cloud of warm synths and effect-laden vocals conveying a sense of longing, and conceded outright "we simply know very little about them," noting they'd been making music online since at least 2014. Members and hometown are not public.

Tamaryn Sitha Brown, born in New Zealand in 1982 and long US-based — New York at the time of this record, later Los Angeles. Her first two albums were dense guitar shoegaze; Cranekiss (2015) is the pivot, made with producer Jorge Elbrecht and Shaun Durkan of Weekend at Brooklyn's Gary's Electric, trading walls of guitar for synths, samples and her voice pushed right to the front. She is such a lifelong Depeche Mode obsessive that she interviewed Martin Gore for V Magazine, having idolised him since she was thirteen. Her most recent album is Dreaming the Dark (2019).

Los Angeles shoegaze/dream-pop band built around singer-guitarist Shawn Marom, whose lineup turned over completely between the 2019 debut Glitch and the self-titled follow-up in 2025. Lo-fi and swathed in reverb and melancholy, but unusually legible for the genre — the vocals sit forward in the mix rather than buried under it. Glitch came out on Terrible, the boutique imprint Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor co-founded that also released Solange's "Losing You," Blood Orange and Chairlift; the 2025 album was made without label support and mixed by Warren Defever of His Name Is Alive at Third Man in Detroit. "Leach" arrived as a single ahead of the album, released in August 2019, where it sits fourth of thirteen — trembling chorus-soaked guitar, drums that kick into double-time, aimed at someone who simply sucks the life out.

Evan Lo, from Newton, Massachusetts, playing piano from childhood and guitar from middle school. Mostly wordless, bittersweet electronic-folk miniatures — gentle, looping, melancholy-but-warm — which found their audience in 2023 when they became the default soundtrack to "hopecore" videos. "Killswitch Lullaby" is a July 2023 single from exactly that moment; the instrumental album Killswitch Melodies followed later that year, and "Dramamine" arrived in 2024. A prolific composer whose career was essentially built by an internet subculture reaching for something optimistic.

Sampha Lahai Sisay, born in 1988 in Morden, south London, the youngest of five brothers, to Sierra Leonean parents — a singer, pianist and producer whose cracked, weightless voice made him the most in-demand guest in British music before he'd released an album, turning up on records by Drake, Frank Ocean and Kanye West (with Kendrick Lamar following later). Process (2017) is his debut and largely a record about losing his mother to cancer; it won the Mercury Prize. "Incomplete Kisses" is the album's penultimate track, where the grief begins to resolve into something like release. Unexpectedly for such an interior record, part of it was cut at Ocean Sound on the Norwegian island of Giske.

An electronic producer and trained sound engineer his Resident Advisor biography calls "a nomad of modern times," Germany-based, folding instrumentation picked up on his travels into deep, organic, melodic house. "Man O To" first surfaced on Acid Pauli's Get Lost V in 2012 and became a slow-burning modern classic, later getting its own Crosstown Rebels single in 2017. The vocal is Iranian singer and actress Ghazal Shakeri, sampled from a recording by French film composer Armand Amar, singing a ghazal by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi from the Divan-e Shams — the refrain "man-o to" simply means "you and I." The opening line translates roughly as "blessed is that moment when we sit together on the veranda, you and I; two forms and two faces, but one soul."