Get to know our top 40 new artists for 2018 with these playlists, available on Spotify and Apple Music.

Madison Beer

Already massive on Instagram with more than 10m followers after being spotted by Justin Bieber, stardom seems assured for 18-year-old Beer, whose style and blowsy, honey-fried voice all hit the zeitgeist square in the bullseye. Musically, too, there’s Xanax-friendly floaty R&B but also heartfelt acoustic pop.

Zoee

A sometime singer with pub-pop pioneers the Rhythm Method, London musician Zoee’s solo work sees her pitched-up vocals underlaid with electronics that flit between melancholic minimalism and a riot of retro synths. Littered with references to loneliness and miscommunication, her debut EP Insecure was a blast of saccharine sadness.

Julia Michaels

Perhaps the surest success story of the year, Julia Michaels’ breakthrough solo single Issues has already been nominated for a 2018 Grammy – and that’s added to the string of hits she’s already co-written, from Justin Bieber’s Sorry to Selena Gomez’s Bad Liar. Her husky, earnest voice is put to appealingly honest and unguarded tales where lust and strife intertwine. Read a full interview here.

Moaning

A product of their hometown’s DIY scene, this Los Angeles trio have spent the past couple of years creating moody guitar music that draws on shoegaze, slacker-rock and post-punk. They’ve already whetted appetites for their upcoming debut album with a series of driving, dirge-like, deadpan tunes.

Sarah Tandy

Having turned her back on one bright future as a classical pianist, Sarah Tandy studied jazz at the Royal Academy before leading her own trio as well as playing for numerous other bands. She is now one of the brightest prospects on London’s jazz scene, acclaimed for her inventive takes on the classic repertoire of the likes of Thelonius Monk.

Baywaves

Muttered vocals and guitars that drip with delay characterise this Madrid band’s gorgeous tunes. Like a sun-drenched swimming pool, Baywaves make music that’s warm and shimmering on the surface but coolly controlled at its core. Recent tracks such as Gliss and Down 4 U showcase their nonchalant flair.

Lao Ra

Coming in the wake of a 2017 that took Latin pop to a global audience is Bogotá singer Lao Ra, who uses the accordions and reggaeton beat of her country’s cheesiest pop, and flips them with admirable swagger, channelling the same pop smarts as Charli XCX. If she doesn’t end up on a Major Lazer chorus before 2018 is out, Diplo’s not been doing his homework properly.

Ms Banks

This Camberwell rapper is already getting transatlantic attention for her magnificently disparaging vocal style – Nicki Minaj has quoted her on Twitter and Cardi B took her on tour. Her technical ability and sheer refusal to be cowed make her a hugely charismatic force for British lyricism. Read a full interview here.

Porridge Radio

This exceptional Brighton slacker indie band are led by the magnetic Dana Margolin, who blends the freewheeling romance of Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell with ramshackle C86-style production and the darker, drowsier energy of PJ Harvey or Mark Lanegan. Even when they brood under a drizzly cloud, the surefire melodies can’t help but jangle.

Tom Grennan

After a horrific unprovoked attack by a gang of strangers that left him with metal plates in his jaw, Tom Grennan could have retreated into himself – but instead he’s making some of the most boisterous, vital guitar-pop around. His soulful holler and endearing laddishness means he could be 2018’s answer to Rag’N’Bone Man. Read a full interview here.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs

The Newcastle band with the best name in the UK right now were clasped to the bosom of the psych scene in 2016, thanks to their giant, Sabbath-level cosmic riffs – and could end up creating the kind of swaggering anthems that sent Queens of the Stone Age and Royal Blood into the big time. They might be 17 minutes long though.

Insecure Men

A supergroup of members from Fat White Family, Childhood and more – plus a schoolteacher on vibes calling himself Steely Dan – Insecure Men play a kind of skronked Ariel Pink-style exotica, where rudimentary drum machines patter behind psych-pop ballads about Cliff Richard, teenage sexuality and Penge.

Dawn Ray’d

While some black metal bands merely faff about with the devil, flesh tunnels and difficult-to-read calligraphy, Dawn Ray’d take aim at capitalism and the rotten people who exploit it, with deafening intensity. But emerging between the patches of scorched earth are beautiful passages of English folk, too. Antifa has a new, extremely loud house band.

Sudan Archives

Seamlessly moving between singing and playing guitar and violin, this multitalented neo-soul singer sets her smooth croon against rickety backdrops that nod to the folk music of north-east Africa as well as backpacker hip-hop. If Erykah Badu wandered back to her roots with a four-track, you could imagine something such as this emanating fragrantly from the sessions.

Hak Baker

Delivering freewheeling social realist raps in a broad Cockney accent over hazy acoustic guitars, Hak Baker taps into the same meandering mood as King Krule, delivering songs like a can kicked distractedly down a wet street. His metre is too slippery to alight on a mainstream pop chorus, and yet there’s still something totally universal in his laments.

Rich Chigga

As Soundcloud stars such as 6ix9ne tear up the rulebook about what a rapper looks like, Indonesia’s Rich Chigga – nerdy and deadpan – is moving from ironic punchline to serious MC, self-producing his tracks with a chiming melancholy behind his boasts. Like the best mumble-rappers, he can turn a melody out of even the most monotonous, dead-eyed flow.

Ezra Collective

Led by drummer Femi Koleoso, London quintet the Ezra Collective have marked themselves out from the crowd with their genre-bridging prowess, folding hip-hop, reggae and afrobeat into jazz tradition. Previous stints as rapper Pharoahe Monch’s backing band prove they can put their talents to more than one use.

Smooky MarGielaa

Fifteen years old and with his voice barely broken, Smooky has been brought into the A$AP Mob, thanks to his instinctive yet appealingly unvarnished approach to melody. He’s started working with Murda Beatz, the in-demand producer behind Drake’s Portland, Travis Scott’s Butterfly Effect and Migos’ MotorSport.

Or:la

This Derry producer and DJ has been the secret sauce at dozens of club nights in 2017, with her genre-resistant style that nods to UK garage, deep house and Burial-style atmospheres. Her sets meanwhile ping-pong between the decades, with some breakbeat here, a disco workout there, before heeding the irresistible siren’s call of techno.

Yves Tumor

This already-iconic Tennessee expat is capable of everything from blunted neo-soul to nosebleed punk to lo-fi boogie to enveloping noisy ambience, all of it in teetering heels. After three underground albums, he’s joined the invigorating current roster of Warp alongside excellent fellow new boys Gaika and Lorenzo Senni.

Onyx Collective

An expanding and contracting group of young New York jazz performers, Onyx Collective stretch from scratchy improv to drawling ballads to uptempo post-bop, always with a raw immediacy. Having just released a two-part album full of field recordings, unfettered melodies and no-wave energy that reflects on the Lower East Side, they could be the secret weapon of this summer’s festival circuit.

Chloe x Halle

Beyoncé-endorsed sisters Chloe and Halle Bailey spent their childhoods racking up millions of views on their YouTube videos. They still regularly upload covers – a version of Kendrick Lamar’s Humble proved a hit recently – but these days the Atlanta-based teens focus more on finessing their own lustrously layered strain of R&B.

Donna Missal

This New Jersey singer’s husky tones have already featured on the Macklemore song Over It, but it’s on her own skeletal, soul-indebted pop that she really lets rip, veering from evocative restraint to a huge bluesy wail on strident but subtly atmospheric tracks such as Transformer and Keep Lying.

Cautious Clay

There are shades of Drake in the tracks created by this 24-year-old New Yorker, who backs up his autotuned croon with a smorgasboard of sonic ticks and screwed-up samples. Cold War, his biggest hit to date, layers irresistibly smooth vocals over wooden percussion and what sounds like a trembling tray of champagne glasses.

The Orielles

This Halifax trio have already proven their incredible songwriting chops, crunching jangly indie, trippy psychedelia and dubby post-punk into the mesmerising single Sugar Tastes Like Salt earlier this year. The result was a tribute to indie history that managed to surpass a fair amount of what had come before.

Amelie Lens

This Belgian producer is racking up the Ryanair miles as her popularity snowballs, thanks to classic minimal techno productions that slowly menace you into rapture – complete with cool, unreadable interjections from Lens on the mic. She is capable of the kind of all-enveloping big-room majesty that could land her near the top end of festival bills this summer.

Lanark Artefax

Teetering lipsmackingly between abstraction and banging dance, and with a palette of sound that spans deep ambient, junglism and techno, this Glaswegian producer is already disturbingly accomplished. There’s a touch of Aphex Twin to his splattering, impetuous productions, but rendered in bright, ultra-contemporary synthesis.

Maleek Berry

London-born Berry has already worked with such afrobeat luminaries as Wizkid, Davido and Fuse ODG during his time as a producer. His fledgling solo career, meanwhile, has seen him gild the afrobeat sound with harsh trap snares to create tunes that are fresh as well as rich and vibrant.

Batu

The man behind feted underground Bristol techno label Timedance, Batu’s own productions avoid bland 4/4 kick drums and instead embrace off-kilter rhythms and instrumentation, where jazz and dub converge on a strobe-lit Friday night dancefloor – a little like kindred spirits Laurel Halo, Minor Science and Call Super.

Venom Prison

These Welsh death-metallers have been booked on to a 2018 tour with scene legends Trivium, thanks in part to their striking lead singer Larissa Stupar, who roars about feeding rapists their own genitals, amongst other topics. Passages of hyper-kinetic melody crash into others of grim-faced catharsis, as the kick-drum pedals go into overdrive.

Amber Mark

After her mother passed away in 2013, Amber Mark began channelling her sadness into a series of songs. The result was her raw and vivid EP 3.33am, a collection of blistering tracks each of which captured one of the stages of grief, while borrowing from R&B, gospel and EDM-flecked chart pop.

Dream Wife

Icelandic singer Rakel Mjöll fronts this British guitar band, her voice switching between Scandi-pop sweetness and a rip-roaring punk yowl. Dream Wife’s music simmers with lust and fury – on tracks such as Let’s Make Out and Fire they manage to strip the angular 00s indie sound of its dad-ish associations in the process.

Yaeji

Kathy Lee, who was born in New York but grew up in South Korea, makes house tunes that feel instantly familiar. Her track Drink I’m Sippin’ On became a runaway hit this year, in no small part thanks to Lee’s hypnotic lyrics, half-rapped and half-sung in either English or Korean.

IAMDDB

With a voice as drowsy as a September wasp, this Mancunian singer and rapper gives a jazzy bent to anything she takes on, be it downbeat R&B, head-nodding neo-soul, or – in a guest spot for producer Lenzman – bright, peppy drum’n’bass. Her breakthrough track is the infectious rap cut Shade, which hymns an Uber addiction and a refusal to wear underwear around announcements of her own brilliance.

Stella Donnelly

This young Aussie singer-songwriter’s slacker image and taste in album titles (her first EP, which was released earlier this year, is called Thrush Metal) bely her exquisite acoustic fare, with Donnelly’s clear, soaring voice and sweetly plucked guitar a foil for lyrics steeped in exasperation and sadness.

Lone Taxidermist

Led by the imperious Natalie Sharp, Lone Taxidermist’s 2017 album Trifle was a cult hit for its blend of post-punk and Peaches-style electro, along with the complete withholding of any fucks – and 2018 should see them build their reputation as the best live band you have yet to see. Imagine a fetish party in a bubble-wrap factory overseen by a pushy lollipop lady and you’re kind of getting near.

Flohio

Best known for lending her vocals to harsh, industrial tracks by Merseyside production duo God Colony, south London MC Flohio’s formidable, staccato rap style has already earned her support slots for US rapper Princess Nokia and respected producers Mura Masa and Clams Casino.

Káryyn

This Björk-endorsed Syrian-American producer weaves fluttering beats and sampled vocals into stark, billowing soundscapes. Having previously worked in opera (she co-created Of Light while a student of Marina Abramović), Káryyn’s songs reference choral tradition as well as avant-garde electronica: the result is both ethereal and unsettling.

Abra Cadabra

Abra Cadabra is the MC most likely to fully break out of the vibrant yet bleak “UK drill” scene, where harsh American trap collides with the post-colonial melting pot of south London. With a voice so gruff and scarred it makes Giggs sound like Tweety Bird, he can nevertheless suddenly rise into a melodious chorus.

47Soul

The musicians that make up the self-christened “shamstep” supergroup 47Soul hail from all over the world, but are all dedicated to the cause of reworking traditional Middle Eastern music into party-starting electronic smashes. The band’s members have previously worked in genres including dub, alt rock, folk and rap – the ensuing fusion is fascinating.