9 Believe artists and groups to end this season on a high note

If you've got the summer vacation blues - or the winter vacation blues, if you're way down south - we've got you covered. We've got French R&B, happy pop from Brazil, Indian hip-hop, romantic ballads from Malaysia and even modern boleros.  There's something for everyone, and every interest.

The best part is you don't have to pick a favorite - they can all be your favorite artists of the new season!

Now all you have to do is press play and let yourself be carried away! Happy reading, and happy listening.

In just a few months, Merveille has become a true phenomenon. She is only 16 but has known since the age of 7 that she was going to be an artist. Convinced that she would go far, her family even moved from Lyon to Paris to support her.

She began recording herself on her phone and composing tracks on a mobile app, then quickly surrounded herself with a small team before releasing Peace&love, in early 2023. A first EP with more polished tracks and a calling card for her style between pop, rap and R&B. In October 2023, she released the single "Ghetto", which went viral on TikTok, and set streaming platforms alight - 20 million listens to date. She did it again in December with her single "Citadelle". It was enough to get her noticed by the public, critics and professionals alike.

2024 was her year: Merveille opened for top artists such as Nej' and won the Female Revelation of the Year award at Les Flammes, French music awards given to French urban, hip-hop, R&B and new pop artists. In April, she released her new single “Paquetá”, which was subsequently included on Identité, a new 6-track EP conceived as a gift to her growing audience. And there's no doubt that Merveille has plenty more to come!

Born in the 19th century, manele is a musical genre typical of Romania and its Roma communities. While the historic style still exists, it has evolved into a new genre, a blend of pop, electronica and traditional sounds - modern manele. Babasha is one of its most exciting new names.

Perhaps it's because he studied at Bucharest Conservatory or because he's from a family of manele musicians, but Babasha's way of blending folk and modern sounds into energetic and soulful tracks made him one the new icon of the genre in just a few years. He slowly started gaining recognition between 2020 and 2022 thanks to a few singles and song covers he did on social media. In 2023, his song "Ia-Ma Du-Ma" became a viral sensation, garnering 15 million streams in a month.

Since then, he's been hitting the bull's-eye with every track: his singles "Nebulia Liu BABASHA" and "Aoleu" exceeded 10 million Youtube views, while "Baklava", the Gya's song where he features, reached 50 million. Released in June, "Păi Naa" has become Romania's summer hit and will soon pass 40 million views. Babasha's success is such that he has been invited by Coldplay to play at their Bucharest shows. This should establish his career for good in Romania, and perhaps even beyond.

While we usually talk about emerging artists in our quarterly selections, this time we're cheating a little. Because, although she's launching her solo career, Gabriela played in the pop band Melim with her two brothers Rodrigo and Diogo for almost ten years. If you're wondering how popular it is, let's just say that Melim has nearly a dozen platinum-certified tracks and has twice been nominated for a Latino Grammy.

Perhaps we should even say “relaunch” her solo career, as Gabriela had released a samba raiz record when she was just 15, which allowed her to tour abroad. In 2015, she and her brothers decided to form the band after playing together at a festival. They soon found themselves on the musical reality show Superstar, and their career was launched. After several albums and EPs, the band announced in October 2023 that they were going on hiatus.  Just a few weeks later, Gabriela announces that she is preparing a solo project.

The project finally took shape this summer, with the June launch of a first single, "Saudade Sussurrou", which exceeded 500,000 views in two weeks on YouTube.  Released on August 1, her solo album Gabriela is already receiving an enthusiastic welcome. A mini-tour to present the album live is also planned for the coming weeks.

If you were introduced to a young Central American artist in 2023, you might not think at first that she sings bolero, one of the oldest Hispano-American musical genres, very popular between the 1920s and 1970s. But Dani Labbé is a bolero singer, and a very talented one at that.

It should be said that the young artist is passionate and very well surrounded, having crossed paths with the renowned producer Rodolfo Castillo (who has worked with Oscar d'Leon, Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony and Plácido Domingo, among others). He helped his protégée define her style and had her compose and record her first bolero, "Un Para Siempre", when she was just 15. In 2023, she released a second original song, "Corazon de Hielo".

In early 2024, she released her 3rd single, "Pasa El Tiempo", and announced her first EP, De-Lirios, which came out in April. In addition to the first singles, it contains 3 covers of bolero classics – "Como Fue", "Quiereme Mucho" and "No Me Quieras Tanto" - which Dani adapts to her more modern style, while retaining the melancholy and nostalgic spirit that make the bolero so charming. Like others before her, Dani Labbé has already understood that the "bolero is life". And she'll convince you too!

Although he grew up in Malaysia, Firdhaus is considered to be one of the new rising stars of Mandopop, pop music in Mandarin. And while Malay is his mother tongue, he has been fluent in Mandarin since childhood. In fact, it was listening to the king of Mandopop Jay Chou at that time that got him interested in music.

He was already a full-time live singer when was spotted by the Loolala Music label in 2021. They helped him release "Gulf of Alaska", a ballad that propelled him to stardom. On DouYin (Chinese version of Tiktok), the track went beyond viral, reaching 820 million cumulative views and helping him gain a massive fanbase. He released his 1st EP the same year, and his 1st album Up And Down? in 2022. He kept releasing songs that accumulated millions of views and streams, particularly "Divorce In Ghana", which has racked up 19 million views on YouTube and is still in the Malaysian Top 10 at the time of writing (along with 3 other of his songs).

Earlier in 2024, he released other ballads, such as "Eternal Friendship", another viral hit released in June, with 7 million views on YouTube. Firdhaus recently announced a concert tour, with tickets selling out in less than an hour - that's how popular he is!

One might think that creating a band during the COVID pandemic might not be a good idea. But that's exactly what SNACKTIME did, and they were right to do it! During the lockdown, the band's seven members, all brass band musicians, would gather in Philadelphia parks for impromptu gigs covering soul, funk and hip-hop tunes. In doing so, they quickly became local celebrities, and their adventure was just beginning.

After the pandemic, SNACKTIME found themselves playing in concert halls, and the infectious energy of their sets mixing funk, punk, soul and rock opened the door to national tours - often sold out - and national festivals such as Life Is Beautiful, Sea.Hear.Now , Sound on Sound... and even the public birthday party organized in New York by comedian Eric André for his 40th birthday.

After concluding 2023 with an anthology concert in Philadelphia, SNACKTIME played six times at the SXSW festival, then released the singles "Together" and "I Don't Give A Damn" - picked up a few weeks later on the Spaceluv EP - and announced a debut studio album due out soon, most likely after the band's summer tour supporting rock combo Portugal. The Man.

Well hidden under his balaclava, very private on social networks, it's hard to know much about Punjabi rapper Real Boss. The best way to talk about him is to talk about his music, but here again nothing is easy. Real Boss can go from trap to old-school boom-bap, sampling traditional Indian instruments. One thing's for sure: he raps hard, clean and precise, and there's a reason why he has over a million monthly listeners on Spotify.

He appeared in the summer of 2021 with two hit singles "Queens of Lies" and "Shabab". He released no less than 8 singles in the following months. In 2022, he kept up the momentum with 13 singles, some of which were hits like "Questions" (16 million streams) and "Murder" (35 million streams), a track that reinforced Real Boss' collaboration with members of SMG, a rap collective from Mumbai. Their collaboration continued in 2023, as on the trap-flavored "Honeybees", and on the When We Ride and Untitled EPs.

Although 2024 appears to be a quieter year for Real Boss, it's still a very productive one, as he has already released 2 EPs: Cold Sample, which features Indian sounds and old-school hip-hop, and Unleashed, released in July, which focuses on darker, more modern intrusions.

In a couple years, Young Blood Neet has become one of the hottest names of Pinoy hip-hop. Though he first started to release music in 2019, and started to get noticed in 2021 with tracks like "Trippin' Out" or "Hoodrat", it really all blow up for him in 2022: in the first half of that year, he released a string of singles which became increasingly popular.

It was his single "Dem Days" with Flow-G, another Filipino hip-hop big cat, that definitely made his name shine. Released in July 2022, it's one of his biggest hit so far with more than 12 million streams on Spotify. He kept gaining traction through 2023 thanks to several collaboration, singles, his EP Hood Blessing, and his mixtape PRESSURE.

YB Neet keeps proving he's one of the hottest talents on the 2024 pinoy rap scene. Released in February, the R&B single 'ILY' with Bugoy Na Koykoy cumulated 32 millions streams so far. Both artists also recently released their Training Day mixtape. YB Neet announced his forthcoming 2K Season Mixtape at a listening party in Manila that brought together his fans and prestigious guests from the Filipino rap scene. There's no doubt that Young Blood Neet will establish himself as a pillar of this same scene in the years to come.

Emmerson Bockarie is perhaps the best-known Sierra Leonean singer and songwriter in the world, and undoubtedly the artist with the longest career in our selection, since his first feats of arms date back to 2002, with the release of his mixtape Bodyguard Compilation, Volume One. The Afropop star has made a name for himself both for his writing skills - in English, Krio and indigenous languages - and for his activism.

In 2007, his song “Borbor Bele”, denouncing the corruption of the Sierra Leonean government, was a hit. Since then, he has continued to tackle political issues, which are a common thread running through his eight albums; the last one, 9 Lives, being released in 2020. Emmerson's stance on the country's problems, most often non-partisan, has led him to be the target of several attacks by local authorities.

Early 2024,Emmerson ventured into the R&B genre on the single "Stick To The Plan" with rapper Lola Brooke and Howard Hewett (who rose to fame as Shalamar's lead singer), the track was a blast, gathering more than 1.8 millions YouTube views. In June, Emmerson joined forces with American-Nigerian sensation Davido for the Afropop track ‘Strawberry On Ice’, which has already been viewed almost 1.5 million times on YouTube. And the next view will probably be yours!