EKHO Sonic Chill #9

thredd. London trio: Imogen "Immy" Williams (also known for her project Imogen and the Knife), Will Lister and Max Winter. They came together in November 2023 during a four-week residency at the West London venue Laylow, which Theo Fabunmi Stone of Scenic Route helped arrange. They call it "cold pop." Icy, synth-led pop that pulls as much from trip-hop forebears like Portishead and Massive Attack as from Gorillaz, DJ Shadow and Britney Spears. Their debut album, It's Lovely, Come On In (Scenic Route, 2025), grew out of that residency, and the venue was being sold while it happened. The band noticed inventory staff arriving and equipment being readied for sale while they played. They took the album on a UK tour with Slow Cooked in September 2025.

Wu-Lu is Miles Romans-Hopcraft, a musician from Brixton, South London. He's the son of a contemporary dancer and a trumpeter who co-founded the London reggae-fusion band Soothsayers. His music is deliberately genre-agnostic, splicing punk urgency into dub, trip-hop, grunge and electronic production. His 2022 Warp debut, Loggerhead, scored 83/100 on Metacritic and picked up nominations for Best Punk Record at the Libera Awards and Best Independent Album at the AIM Awards. "Last Night With You" is off the follow-up, Learning to Swim on Empty (Warp, 17 May 2024), which The Quietus heard as built around a recurring motif of water, drowning and floating. As a student at the Brixton music and media school Raw Material he tutored other students in music production, and later worked at Alford House, a youth club in Kennington. In June 2026 he put out Bakerz Dozen, a collaborative EP with POiSON ANNA, on Warp.

The Flints. Twin brothers George and Henry Flint out of Manchester, England, who spent years writing for other artists, including Jean Dawson and Melanie Martinez, before focusing on their own thing. They worked with Justice on "Mannequin Love" and joined Justice's Hyperdrama world tour. As The Flints, on Nettwerk, they make psychedelic, harmony-driven pop on hypnotic guitars and close twin vocals. "Supernatural Feelings," pieced together between Manchester and Toronto and finished in their home studio, came out in July 2025, the month before their EP 21st Century Love (Nettwerk, 15 August 2025). After years behind the scenes they chose to build their own catalogue, following up with the Jewel of the North EP in August 2026. This version is a remix by Night Tapes.

Bonobo is Simon Green, a producer born in Brighton, England, now based in Los Angeles. Releasing since 1999, and a defining voice of 2000s downtempo electronica. He moved from the trip-hop-leaning beats and samples of Animal Magic (2000) and Dial 'M' for Monkey (2003) into the more organic, globally inflected productions of Days to Come (2006), Black Sands (2010) and the Grammy-nominated Migration (2017). "Nightlite" features poet and singer Bajka (Bajka Pluwatsch, a German artist born in India and raised in Portugal and South Africa), and it's one of four tracks she voiced on Days to Come. In 2026 Bonobo, Kamasi Washington and Floating Points won Best Original Score for Animation at Music Awards Japan for scoring Shinichirō Watanabe's anime series Lazarus. His eighth studio album, Distance in Static, came out on 11 September 2026 on Ninja Tune.

Yppah is Joe Corrales Jr., a Texas-raised electronic producer based in Long Beach, California. He started in rock bands and turntablism, then moved into his signature blend of shoegaze, psychedelia, soul and reverb-soaked electronic rock. Three albums on Ninja Tune: You Are Beautiful at All Times (2006), They Know What Ghost Know (2009) and Eighty One (2012, home of "Some Have Said"). Then Tiny Pause (Counter, 2015) and Sunset in the Deep End (Future Archive, 2020). His music's been placed in the film 21 and TV series including House and CSI. And get this: "Never Mess with Sunday," written for Ninja Tune's 20th-anniversary box set in 2010, was later sampled in Lil Peep's platinum-certified "Star Shopping." A quietly durable footprint for a largely instrumental artist.

KAYTRANADA is Louis Kevin Celestin, born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1992 and raised in Saint-Hubert, Quebec, near Montreal. He fuses house, hip-hop, R&B, funk and dance music into a springy, sample-driven sound that made him one of the most influential producers of the 2010s–2020s. From his debut 99.9% (2016, Polaris Music Prize winner) through the Grammy-winning Bubba (2019) to Timeless (2024) and Ain't No Damn Way! (2025). "At All" is an early 2013 non-album single, remixed by Seattle producer Sango. In 2021 KAYTRANADA became the first Black producer and the first openly gay artist to win the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album, for Bubba. The remixer, Sango (Kai Asa Savon Wright), is Seattle-born and Grand Rapids-raised, folding Brazilian baile funk into electronic, hip-hop and R&B across projects like North (2013) and the Da Rocinha series. In March 2025 he released the official Seattle Sonic ID for the FIFA World Cup 26, representing his hometown.

Vök. Icelandic dream-pop / indietronica band out of Reykjavík, formed in January 2013 by singer Margrét Rán Magnúsdóttir and saxophonist Andri Enoksson. They won Iceland's national band competition Músíktilraunir that March, within two months of existing. Cool-blue electronic dream pop: breathy vocals, saxophone used as atmosphere rather than solo, and a trip-hop undertow. Key records: the Circles EP (2015, home of both "Waterfall" and "If I Was"), Figure (2017), In the Dark (2019) and the self-titled Vök (2022, Nettwerk). Margrét Rán has since become a member of GusGus.

Tricky is Adrian Thaws, born in Knowle West, Bristol, in 1968 to a Jamaican father and a Ghanaian-English mother. He became one of trip-hop's defining voices, folding hip-hop, dub, ragga and alternative rock into dense, whispery, claustrophobic productions. First as a guest vocalist with Massive Attack, then solo from his landmark debut Maxinquaye (1995). "Aftermath" was one of the first things he made with Martina Topley-Bird, then a teenager at Clifton College. He found her singing to herself on a wall near his house. He offered it to Massive Attack, they passed, so he put it out independently in Bristol in 1993 before it resurfaced on Maxinquaye. Topley-Bird went on to her own solo career, including the Mercury Prize-nominated Quixotic (2003) and Forever I Wait (2021). Tricky's kept working steadily since, with Nearly God (1996), Pre-Millennium Tension (1996) and False Idols (2013), and put out his fifteenth studio album, Different When It's Silent, on his own False Idols label on 17 July 2026.

Acopia. Trio out of Melbourne, Australia: Kate Durman, Lachlan McGeehan and Morgan Wright. Dream-pop built on "clean lines and messy feelings." Minimalist electronic production under clipped guitars and snappy drums. "Talk About It" (2025) explores the tension of words left unspoken. Three full-length albums in four years, Chances (2022), Acopia (2023) and Blush Response (Scenic Route, 2025), and they toured Europe in 2025, including a show in Paris.

Ivy. Dominique Durand on vocals, a Parisian who moved to New York to study English, with New York musicians Andy Chase and the late Adam Schlesinger, who formed the trio in 1994. Lush, breathy dream pop. 'Apartment Life' (1997) is a fan favourite, then 'Long Distance' (2000), 'In the Clear' (2005) and 'All Hours' (2011). Schlesinger died of COVID-19 complications in April 2020. Searching the archives for bonus tracks in 2021, Chase and Durand found unfinished material spanning their whole career, and that became the 2025 album 'Traces of You,' with Schlesinger on every track. In November 2025 Ivy announced their first live shows in 15 years, with the remaining finished songs from those sessions earmarked for a separate album.

Yndling is Silje Espevik, a Norwegian singer-songwriter-producer based in Oslo. She started in 2020 as a bedroom producer posting demos to SoundCloud. Dream pop with real weight: shoegaze guitar haze, trip-hop drum programming and a cool Scandinavian melancholy. She cites Beach House, Mazzy Star, Portishead and Massive Attack as touchstones. A self-titled EP (2022) first, then the album 'Mood Booster' (Spirit Goth, August 2024) and the two-part 'Time Time Time (I'm in the Palm of Your Hand)' (6 November 2025), split between a shoegaze half and a trip-hop/dream-pop half. The Line of Best Fit ran a November 2025 feature crediting her with reinventing dream pop, timed with her first European headline tour.

Cocteau Twins. Scottish trio, formed in Grangemouth in 1979: Robin Guthrie (guitars, drum machines), Elizabeth Fraser (vocals) and Simon Raymonde (bass, keyboards), who replaced founding member Will Heggie in 1983. They're the defining dream pop / ethereal wave act. Chiming, effects-drenched guitar under Fraser's soprano, sung largely in invented, non-lexical language. 'Garlands' (1982), 'Treasure' (1984) and 'Heaven or Las Vegas' (1990) are the essential records. Their influence runs remarkably wide: Prince, Slowdive, Deftones and The Weeknd are all counted among the artists they influenced, and in 2008 they got the Q Awards' Inspiration Award. They split in 1997 while recording a ninth album. Raymonde went on to co-found the label Bella Union, and Fraser returned in 2022 with the Sun's Signature EP.

Phantogram. Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter, childhood friends from Greenwich, in upstate New York. They formed the band in 2007 and originally wrote and recorded in a remote barn called Harmonie Lodge. Their thing is hip-hop-weighted drum programming under hazy guitar and Barthel's cool, floating vocal. Five albums deep: 'Eyelid Movies' (2010), 'Voices' (2014), 'Three' (2016), 'Ceremony' (2020), 'Memory of a Day' (2024). They're on the bill for Two Door Cinema Club's Madison Square Garden show on 27 September 2026.

Cannons. Trio out of Los Angeles: Michelle Joy (vocals), Ryan Clapham (guitar) and Paul Davis (keys/bass). They formed in 2013 after Clapham and Davis, childhood friends who'd written together since their teens, found Joy through a Craigslist ad she'd posted looking for a band that needed a singer. Glossy, synth-driven dream pop leaning into 80s-inflected electropop and synthwave, from the self-released 'Night Drive' (2017) through 'Shadows' (2019), 'Fever Dream' (2022) and 'Heartbeat Highway' (2023). 'Up All Night' is the title track of a 2014 EP from their earliest days. 'Fire for You,' off 'Shadows,' went from album track to RIAA Platinum and a Billboard Alternative Airplay No. 1 after Netflix's 'Never Have I Ever' used it in 2020, and that led to their signing with Columbia. Their fifth album, 'Everything Glows,' came out on 27 March 2026 on Columbia, and they co-headlined a 2026 tour with Bob Moses.

Röyksopp. Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland, childhood friends from Tromsø in the Norwegian Arctic, who came up through the late-90s Bergen Wave. 'Melody A.M.' (2001) is one of the definitive downtempo records. Warm, melodic, faintly melancholy electronica that went to No. 1 in Norway and No. 9 in the UK, sold three-quarters of a million copies, and landed in The Guardian's '1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die.' Norway's Verdens Gang named it the best Norwegian album of the 2000s. They announced 2014's 'The Inevitable End' as their final album, then came back with the sprawling 'Profound Mysteries' trilogy (2022), the ambient 'Nebulous Nights' (2024) and 'True Electric' (2025).

Zola Blood. London four-piece: Matt West (vocals), Ed Smith (synths), Paul Brown (guitars) and Sam Cunnington (drums). They came together in Hackney Wick in 2013 from different parts of the country. Melancholic, electronic-based indietronica built from modular synths and techno textures. Debut EP 'Meridian' (2014) led to the album 'Infinite Games' (2017), the 'Two Hearts' EP (2020), 'Black Blossom' (2022) and the four-track 'Nothing is Wasted' (8 August 2025, 2258 Records). Back in December 2016, before they'd put out a full album, their single 'Islands' landed on Spotify's flagship US New Music Friday playlist.

DJ Cam is Laurent Daumail. Parisian producer, one of the founding figures of French trip-hop, coming up in the mid-90s alongside the wider French Touch wave that produced Daft Punk, Air, Cassius and Bob Sinclar. 'Underground Vibes' (1995) and 'The Beat Assassinated' (1998) are his most admired records. Dusty, jazz-soaked, cinematic instrumental hip-hop that helped define what downtempo sounded like in France. He's been prolific and restless ever since, moving through jazz (the DJ Cam Quartet), drum & bass and house without ever fully leaving the boom-bap behind, and he was invited to curate an entry in the prestigious DJ-Kicks mix series. He founded the Inflamable label and releases on his own DJ Cam imprint. In May 2026 he turned up alongside Yann Dulché and Télépopmusik on 'The Endless Groove' (Thrills & Beats Records).

New Constellations. Harlee Case and Josh Smith, lifelong friends from southern Oregon who met as teenagers through their church youth group. Smith helped record Case's first song when she was 13 and he was 15. They reconnected in 2014 when Case invited Smith to see Dave Matthews Band at the Gorge in Washington, and went on to write together as a Portland-based duo. Shimmering, synth-driven dream pop with 80s-inflected dance melodies. Breakout single 'Hot Blooded' (2021) had passed 220 million streams across platforms by August 2026, when it was added to Fortnite Festival's Jam Tracks. Debut album 'It Comes in Waves' (15 May 2026, Nettwerk) collects 13 of the more than 600 songs the pair have written together. Both left their day jobs in early 2025 to do music full-time. In September 2026 they played their first European and UK headline tour, with dates in London, Berlin, Paris and Prague.

FATE. Independent instrumental producer based in Vermont, USA, putting music out on Bandcamp as beatsbyfate. Dark, bass-forward beats with moody, cinematic synth work. "Darkness" is off the self-released Pathways EP (February 2018), the earliest release on that Bandcamp page, which also has the A Place Below EP, the album Euphoria and a run of singles through "Dark Days" (August 2020).

Tokyo Tea Room. Dream-pop band from Kent, England, not Tokyo, built around songwriter, guitarist and producer Dan Elliott and vocalist Beth. Groovy, danceable dream pop with a bedroom, DIY streak. Their debut album "No Rush" came out on 24 January 2025, and the second studio album, "Feel Forever" (Nice Guys), followed on 18 September 2026. A 10-track record tracing a romantic relationship from falling head over heels to uncertainty, with 31 headline dates across the UK, US and Europe.

Flavor Crystals. Psychedelic shoegaze/space-rock band out of Minneapolis, built around guitarist-singer Josh Richardson. A woozy, "wobbly, floating" psych sound made from 60s psychedelia, 70s kraut/prog, 80s Kiwi pop and 90s shoegaze. The catalogue includes the Kramer-produced "Ambergris" (2007) and 2015's "The Shiver of the Flavor Crystals" (home to "Antenna House"), and "Gone Six" came out in 2024. In 2009 The Brian Jonestown Massacre invited them to open 18 shows on a US tour.

Mother Soki is Annie Tammearu, a Minneapolis singer/multi-instrumentalist. She'd been studying fashion design in Chicago, then came home and taught herself production in GarageBand, then Ableton, starting in 2021. Dark, reverb-heavy dream/gothic pop: Cocteau Twins and Siouxsie & the Banshees filtered through skeletal guitars and airy vocals. Her single "Rivet Gun" went viral on TikTok in April 2025 after Ellie Goulding shared it, passing 6 million Spotify streams. She signed with Mom + Pop and played First Avenue's Best New Bands showcase on 17 January 2026. She's stayed rooted in the Twin Cities rather than moving to LA or New York.

Bathe Alone is Bailey Crone, a classically trained multi-instrumentalist from Atlanta, Georgia. She plays drums, guitar and bass as well as singing. Working with producer Damon Moon, she makes warm, reverb-heavy dream pop she's described as music to "lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling to," often compared to Beach House, Widowspeak and The xx. "The Silence" is off her 2021 debut album Last Looks. Her second, Fall With The Lights Down, came out in August 2023 on Kansas City label The Record Machine, and her third, I Don't Do Humidity, followed in June 2024.

Jane Maximova. Russian singer, songwriter and producer with a background in classical piano. She's been experimenting with electronic music since 2003, and worked with various Russian groups as a singer and song author before going solo. Her debut album, Wabi Sabi, came out in 2010. Ambient, neo-classical and folk-tinged songwriting, warm, melancholic and introspective. In March 2010 she won Russia's national Chart's Dozen prize in the "Breaking-In" category for her original orchestration and performance of a Russian folk song. She's worked as a guest vocalist with the downtempo project LemonGrass, and since 2018 has released on the German label Lemongrassmusic: "Equinox" (2018), "Dandelion Will Still Grow" (2023), the single "Closer" feat. Dmitry Raschepkin and "Distant Gardens" (both 2025).

The Kundalini Genie. Psychedelic/shoegaze band out of Glasgow, Scotland, built around singer and multi-instrumentalist Robbie Wilson. Their debut album Reverberation came out in 2017. The sound runs from fuzzed-out 60s psych on the early records to a heavier, more shoegaze-leaning attack on 2021's "Half In, Half Out," which was mastered by Ride's Mark Gardener. A real co-sign from one of the founding acts of shoegaze. "False Highs, True Lows" (Last Night From Glasgow, 2023) is their sixth album, and they backed it with 2023 shows including Kendal Calling and the Manchester and Edinburgh Psych Fests.

Hidden Orchestra is Joe Acheson, a composer and producer in Edinburgh. His own words: 'an imaginary orchestra, played live by a real band.' On record he writes, records, programs and plays much of it himself, bass, samples, kantele, glockenspiel, and then a live quartet realises it. Two drummers, Tim Lane and Jamie Graham, on duelling kits, with Poppy Ackroyd on piano and violin. Night Walks (Tru Thoughts, 2010) was the debut. 'Flight' followed as the title track of a November 2011 EP that also carries cello, harp, clarinet and soprano sax. By then their touring had taken in twenty countries in a single year, they'd played Glastonbury 2011 with an expanded ten-piece line-up, and Cerys Matthews booked them for a live BBC 6Music session after interviewing them. Recent Bandcamp releases include the album To Dream Is to Forget (September 2023), Broken (September 2024) and DIYSRL RMXS (November 2024).