Australian artist Mallrat creates songs with low-key feel in the way she brings introverted bedroom pop notes and hip-hop accents to her contemporary R&B inspired tunes.
Find out more about her music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/mallrat
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Mallrat | the PROPAGANDA site
Mallrat is the stage name of Grace Shaw, an indie singer-songwriter who creates mostly low-key pop music with an intimate feel. Her melodies feel introverted and fairly restrained. She does not jump at the audience with any big sonic gestures. The songs are sweet and melodic without overdoing it. She has a nice and slightly misty voice and a somewhat aloof delivery. The production has the type of blurriness that is typical of bedroom recordings. The arrangements are lively, and they serve the songs well. Her 2022 full length album Butterfly Blue comes across as a great leap for the artist who started out with dance oriented electronic pieces in her first EP, Uninvited (2016), then moved on to a more folksy tone and mid-tempo contemplative songs in between.
Drummer, composer, producer Makaya McCraven creates jazz as a work of fusion in the way he embraces hip-hop, funk, rock, and a variety of musical traditions around the world.
Find out more about his music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/makaya-mccraven
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Makaya McCraven | the PROPAGANDA site
Makaya McCraven is a jazz drummer, producer, and composer who works primarily in the fusion genre, but only in the broadest sense of the world. He has built a career on creating a jazz-based hybrid music that incorporates hip-hop, funk, and electronic as well as various musical traditions from around the world. A technique that he often favors is to record his extended improvisation sessions then create the final product through mixing and editing, which is how he captures a sound that is both spontaneous and cutting edge at the same time. This method also informs the shadings of the music he creates, though as a drummer, he is fairly focused on the groove and beat construction rather than flashy gestures. His 2021 album is a reinterpretation of Gil Scott-Heron's last recorded album, I'm New Here.
Maisha emerged in the late '10s London scene as a band loaded with talent that merged elements of some of the classic jazz trends of the early '60s with West African and Caribbean musical traditions.
Find out more about their music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/maisha
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Maisha | the PROPAGANDA site
Maisha is a London-based jazz band led by drummer and arranger Jack Long, also boasting musicians like Nubya Garcia on sax, Shirley Tetteh on guitar, and Daniel Casimir on bass, who are all prominent figures in the current London scene. Their music draws from the familiar Caribbean and West African traditions, as do many other bands and artists that are currently active in that area. An additional component they also bring is the introspective and meditative jazz that recalls the work of the greats artists of a previous generation, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Yusef Lateef, as well as the mid to late '60s work of John Coltrane. Their membership has been on some rotation recently as the members have been involved in multiple ongoing projects simultaneously.
Lorde pretty much set the tone on bedroom pop production in the '10s with her break out success, and continues to inspire a whole generation of artists a decade plus later.
Find out more about her music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/lorde
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Lorde | the PROPAGANDA site
Lorde (birth name: Ella Yelich-O’Connor) is a singer-songwriter from Auckland, who emerged as an unlikely pop phenom in 2013 with her highly influential album, Pure Heroine. With its strong songs, dark tones, lyrics that hit the spot for a generation, as well as its sparse arrangements (see Tennis Court, Royals), the album had ripple effects in pop music in the following years. When she came back in 2021 after a long hiatus, she had moved away from her original minimalist sound and was tacking closer to conventional pop, accompanied by a full band with a full-bodied sound. Instead of keyboards and electronic tools driving her music, she had multiple guitars strumming some lively chords, leading into big, uplifting choruses that conveyed a more relaxed vibe, while still retaining her distinct voice and instantly recognizable point of view, both lyrical and melodic.
King Krule's music captures the feel of late night cityscape cool with its distinct combination of chill jazz, trip-hop, and post-punk with darkwave tones.
Find out more about his music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/king-krule
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King Krule | the PROPAGANDA site
King Krule (aka Archy Marshall), is an indie artist with a highly distinct blend of post-punk, jazz, and trip-hop, with some occasional dub beats, combined to produce an overall bleak but also quite compelling type of music. He often sings with a gruffy snarl that may bring to mind some classic punk acts. He accesses jazzy chords, dub beats, and trip-hop grooves with such a lot of clarity and coherence that nothing feels tacked on. The output is layers of isolation, restlessness, and yes, gloom that wraps around a melancholic core. His melodies are understated and subtle, almost gestural, but they effectively draw the audience into the particular headspace Marshall wants them in. He can be hypnotic in the best trip-hop tradition, which helps him lure the listener down the path into that dark place that some folks may be reluctant to take.
Between their makeshift instruments and electronic layers, KOKOKO! combines intricate Congolese rhythms with western dance grooves for a maximum load of genre-crossing, upbeat fun.
Find out more about their music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/kokoko
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KOKOKO! | the PROPAGANDA site
Kokoko! (stylized in all caps as KOKOKO!) is a band from Congo that combines traditional Central African music with western electronic dance music. The native Congolese members of the band are famous for having built their instruments by hand using actual scrap material they salvaged from a junkyard. The only non-Congolese member of the band is Débruit, a Frenchman, who brings in the electronic production aspect and synthesizers to the combo. The band's music is driven primarily by the polyrhythmic structure of Central African dance beats with all their infectious wonder, but the western texture is not too far below the surface. The combination of the two strands produce a satisfying amalgamation that hits the audience on multiple fronts.
The music of Local Natives sits in the comfortable ground between indie folk and an upbeat but also calm and expansive indie rock sound, continuing to create melodic gems.
Find out more about their music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/local-natives
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Local Natives | the PROPAGANDA site
Local Natives are a Los Angeles based indie pop band that produces melodic songs with an expansive, big screen sound. They differentiate themselves from a lot of their stylistically similar peers in their emphasis on vocal harmonies and the way they bring the beat, specifically the drums, up front and center in their music. They had a soft spot for the "calm in the eye of the storm" thing Thom Yorke (of Radiohead) popularized, where the singer holds on to long notes while the band is pushing up a high tempo beat. The band's earlier work was aligned closely with indie folk in a lot of ways, but now they have gone deeper into the pop territory. Their hooks can be pretty catchy. They are not a band with any hard edges or dark undertones. Their more recent albums have some clearly dance-oriented numbers along with their usual uptempo music.
Singer-songwriter Kilo Kish has been on a wild ride, from her offbeat and lo-fi hip-hop start to layered art pop and post-punk, that landed on artsy dance pop in recent years.
Find out more about her music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/kilo-kish
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Kilo Kish | the PROPAGANDA site
Kilo Kish is the stage name used by Lakisha Robinson, a singer-songwriter with an ear tuned to experimental frequencies, while currently grooving hard to dance oriented electronic pop with big beats and big choruses. Her catalog is filled with restless genre crossing, from her lo-fi alternative hip-hop mixtape beginnings and folksy alternative R&B material to Reflections in Real Time, her experimental 2016 album that was loaded with layered melodies and intricate beats where she explored questions of daily life. She followed that with her venture into the dark tones of post-punk in her 2019 EP, Mothe. So when she took a dive into a more overt pop sound, with a dancey component firmly built into it, there was no way she was going to offer something typical or ordinary.
Melbourne's Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever delivers a type of jangly, guitar-driven upbeat pop that feels like the band is on the verge of breaking into an extended jam session any moment.
Find out more about their music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/rolling-blackouts-coastal-fever
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Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever | the PROPAGANDA site
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever (aka Rolling Blackouts CF, or RBCF for short) is a band from Melbourne that produces a lot of upbeat pop numbers. They are often associated with the so-called dolewave movement in Australia, which emerged in the early '10s (see Dick Diver) with their jangly guitar based pop coupled with an underpolished and loose sound. RBCF produces music that is pretty much in the same vein. The band is led by three singer/songwriter guitar players, Fran Keaney, Tom Russo, and Joe White, whose simultaneous play often comes in three tracks: the jangle, the rhythm, and the muted lead, expertly packaged like the well-oiled machine that the band is. Joe Russo (brother of Tom) delivers the bass lines that provide the scaffolding for the guitars to do their thing. When the songwriting clicks, the band sounds like they should keep jamming the rest of the day.
Philly based Killiam Shakespeare was a duo active in the '10s, creating a rich, hybrid music that brought in soul, hip-hop and jazz influences under an extra layer of cool, backed by laid-back beats.
Find out more about their music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/killiam-shakespeare
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Killiam Shakespeare | the PROPAGANDA site
Killiam Shakespeare is the highly eclectic keybords/drums duo Corey Berhard and Steve McKie, accompanied by a collection of other musicians in the studio and on stage. Their music creates a rich hybrid of soul, hip-hop, and jazz, and their collaborations are often aligned along one of those axes. Guest vocalists often bring on the soul component, supported by the instrumentation and the beats, of course. There are plenty of jazz elements in their music that references '70s fusion with frequent nods at artists like Chick Corea. McKie usually lays down big, solid grooves that walk the line between fusion and hip-hop. The electronic aspect of their music never quite dominates, but stays in the background as the connective tissue that ties it all together without drawing much attention to itself.
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