Rolling Stone UK’s Future of Music 2025: see the full list

Last year, here at Rolling Stone UK we shared our first ever Future 25 list list as part of the Future of Music series from Rolling Stone titles across the world. In it, we picked out the artists and bands we believe will shape what British music will look like in the years and decades to come. In the year since the list’s publication, our cover stars Rachel Chinouriri and Barry Can’t Swim have sold out tours, slayed Glastonbury and beyond, and led the charge from a list of gamechangers, showing that UK music is in rude health.  

For our second year, we have selected 25 artists for 2025 that, in our opinion, will define the next era of British music. Curated by the Rolling Stone UK team, this year’s list is led by three cover stars. Jordan Adetunji, fresh from the release of his hit single ‘Kehlani’ and new mixtape A Jaguar’s Dream, is poised to be the crossover pop star of the year and beyond, with charm and bars in equal measure.

If Adetunji is attacking pop from the fringes, Malaysia-born, UK-based singer Chloe Qisha is channelling chart-topping greats such as Kylie Minogue to secure her own stardom (see our interview on pages 78–83). Adetunji and Qisha are joined on the digital cover of Rolling Stone UK by Croydon rapper Pozer, a potent and brilliant new voice on the UK rap scene (see our interview on pages 88–93). 

This trio’s collective star is beginning to rise in a vital year for new and emerging British music. 2024 saw a record-breaking £2.4 billion achieved in music sales in the UK, described as a “stunning” comeback for the industry. 

Despite this, grassroots venues continue to be shuttered at an alarming rate. While initiatives such as a £1 Music Venue Trust levy being added to arena and stadium tour tickets by Sam Fender and Coldplay are extremely welcome, more needs to be done to see the record-breaking profits of streaming services and major labels finding their way down to the small venues and organisations through which our Future 25 first made their names. 

Speaking to Rolling Stone UK at the start of the year, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy admitted that it “seems like the system is stacked against the musicians, stacked against the fans” when it comes to experiencing live music and supporting grassroots culture, adding that “government has a key role to play here in bringing people together and resolving these issues”. 

If issues like these are addressed adequately, there is more than enough talent and ambition in our Future 25 list to define a new and steadier next era of British music. So dig in, enjoy, and meet the stars of tomorrow.

– Will Richards, Senior Writer

Jordan Adetunji

“Everything has moved so fast, it’s hard to appreciate it,” Jordan Adetunji told Rolling Stone UK in his Future of Music cover feature, reflecting on a whirlwind 12 months. “But sometimes I get flashbacks or if I get a quiet moment to think, some things come back, and it feels amazing. I know at some point I’m gonna sit down and think about all the amazing things that have happened so far.”

Between the release of new mixtape A Jaguar’s Dream and his last project, 2023’s Rock ’N’ Rave, his progression has been monumental. ‘Kehlani’, his biggest single to date, recently went platinum, having racked up over 370 million Spotify streams and spawned a remix featuring the US pop star it was named after. Adetunji signed a landmark deal with 300 Entertainment and Warner Records UK, received a nomination for Melodic Rap Performance at the Grammys, and has now been included in Rolling Stone UK’s Future of Music list for 2025.

The cohesive sound he’s landed on a dense, futuristic kind of melodic R&B that suffocates you with intense kick patterns and heavy, lingering keys. His is a unique vibe with roots in US club music, hyperpop and drill.

Read the full Future of Music cover feature with Jordan Adetunji here.

Rose Gray 

LOUDER, PLEASE is the title of Rose Gray’s debut album, and also a demand. The album bursts out of the gate with a brash and ear-splitting thud of bass, percussion and Gray’s uncompromising voice. Everything on the singer’s impressive debut is as loud, big and in-your-face as possible, determined to soundtrack the messiest night out of your year.

“I’ve always been obsessed with LOUD music,” Gray confirms, revealing that the title of the album was “born on the mic, a running joke where I was always asking for things to be louder (please)”. With the overwhelming success of Brat re-opening the door for balls-out pop music about our most hedonistic tendencies, Gray is continuing the party into 2025 and asking us to go even harder this time around.

Ceechynaa

‘I told you men I was gonna quit / And you tried to get rid of me?” Ceechynaa asserts at the start of her superb 2024 single, ‘Peggy’, before an extended cackle of laughter. The music of the young London rapper is equal parts confrontational, catchy and hilarious. “I’m pegging that man at the back of the bus,” she states playfully later on ‘Peggy’, and it’s far from the filthiest line on the brilliantly outrageous track.

“There are so many male rappers that just degrade women, and so I think we need an artist to come in and talk about them in the same way they do about women,” she told British Vogue by way of a mission statement, and her modest discography so far is certainly committed to the manifesto. “I’ll tease ’em and scam ’em again,” she raps on debut single ‘Legal Baby’, later also promising to “fuck and finesse his friends”.

The digs are deeper, more intriguing and beyond pure comedy on follow-up track ‘Last Laugh’, where she raps: “The mandem are getting scammed / They think I can heal their childhood trauma.” Across just three singles in the same number of years, Ceechynaa has become an artist who is impossible to ignore. Arriving into 2025 with a wave of hype around her, she’s on the way to becoming UK rap’s most vibrant new star.

Divorce

Goldenhammer, the fictional destination in the title of the debut album from Nottingham quartet Divorce, represents an idea as much as a place. “I don’t know if any of us would be able to summarise exactly what this place looks like or who inhabits it,” the band’s Felix Mackenzie-Barrow told Rolling Stone UK earlier this year, “because I think we’re on the way there. Everything we’re doing is always part of the journey towards it.”

Drive to Goldenhammer is the latest and best example of the understated but gorgeous style of the band. Taking off online with their mid-tempo alt-country gems, the band’s sound is a gorgeously comfortable one, like slipping into a comfortable pair of slippers. 

Mackenzie-Barrow and co-vocalist Tiger Cohen-Towell are a superb double act at the front of the band, their vocals harmonising and weaving in and out of each other as they sing of queer relationships, personal development and their journey towards this fictional wonderland. While the US has led the new country-tinged wave of indie rock through the likes of MJ Lenderman, the UK has found its own brilliant scene-leaders in Divorce.

Wunderhorse

When Wunderhorse released their second album Midas last summer, Rolling Stone UK described it as “the arrival of a band that could become generational”. Their fans clearly agreed, with sold-out rooms — including a sold-out date at London’s Alexandra Palace — on the horizon for 2025. Part of that appeal, no doubt, is a commitment to accepting rough edges, imperfections and giving the sound of a band doing things the old way. “I think there’s something really special about that rawness,” Wunderhorse singer Jacob Slater told Rolling Stone UK last year. The result is something that sounds classic but utterly vital at the same time. 

Nia Smith  

In Nia Smith, UK soul music could have a voice capable of defining the next decade. The combination of her classic vocal with her musical upbringing gives Smith’s work a kaleidoscopic edge. The dancefloor-primed ‘Personal’ takes on a subtle dancehall feel, while ‘Give Up the Fear’ is a powerful paean to the beauty of not giving a fuck. 

Asked about her plans for the future, she recently told Rolling Stone UK: “I just want to play more live shows, man, and make more music. Maybe another EP, but music where I can elevate the sound. Keep it in the same world but deliver the next story and [the] next part of Nia Smith.” We can’t wait to hear it.  

Jacob Alon

Though Scottish singer Jacob Alon earned their stripes through the lauded folk clubs of Edinburgh, the ambition and drive behind their music goes far beyond the genre. Emerging last year with stunning debut single ‘Fairy in a Bottle’, Alon’s voice and style sits somewhere between Adrianne Lenker and Nick Drake, with stories told through a queer lens and of a complicated but beautiful life. A debut album, In Limerence, is set to land at the end of May.

“Music in itself and its nature is quite queer,” Alon told Rolling Stone UK, “especially a lot of the music that pushes boundaries, whether it directly originates from a queer subculture or it just has the attitude of something that wants to be entirely at odds with what’s going on elsewhere.” Though drawing from the past in their musical style, Alon is reaching for an unseen new utopia and emerging as a truly special new voice.

Chloe Qisha

Across just one EP and a few singles, Chloe Qisha has presented a startling collection of hooky, funny, pristine pop songs. On The Chloe Qisha EP from 2024, Qisha showed an immediate knack for writing music that traversed the entirety of pop, past and present, from the Olivia Rodrigo-influenced pop-punk strut of ‘Evelyn’ to the Caroline Polachek-like ‘Sexy Goodbye’.

On her second EP, Modern Romance, out this summer, you can hear the influence of ABBA weighing heavy on the stunning ‘21st Century Cool Girl’, while The 1975 and Talking Heads can be heard on the irresistible funk-pop of ‘Sex, Drugs and Existential Dread’. She describes the dual EPs as a “sister act”, eight songs that present a strong-minded and abundantly talented new pop star.

“I’m just a big fan of all things pop,” she tells Rolling Stone UK in her Future of Music cover feature. “I like trying on all the different hats, because it mixes things up, and I don’t think they sound too dissimilar from one another — it’s a different child but always the same mum and dad. I’ll always be like that, to be honest. There will probably be a country song a few iterations down the line, because why not?”

Read the full Future of Music cover feature with Chloe Qisha here.

John Glacier 

While John Glacier has been in the orbit of Jamie xx, Sampha, FKA twigs and more for years, 2025 feels like the year for her to explode in her own right. Marrying leftfield taste with the smoothest bars and an ear for melody, the singer’s debut album, Like a Ribbon, pulls together material from a number of recent EPs and displays her prowess as a poet and storyteller.

The Hackney-born artist has one foot in the club world, with the other hovering between pop and something that defies categorisation. The album’s narrative concerns her upbringing in east London and the fantastical worlds she creates beyond her real life. It’s an accurate overall description of Glacier as an artist too: she is inspired by her surroundings while always reaching to transcend them.

berlioz

When Jasper Attlee started the berlioz project, it was to distance himself and his personal life from the music he was making. Ted Jasper, his former project, “was ‘me’”, he told Rolling Stone UK last year, “berlioz is an outlet for my art.” With berlioz, Attlee makes deliciously smooth and inventive jazz-house that looks outside himself for inspiration.

On his extremely impressive catalogue of material so far, most recently 2024’s debut album open this wall, he samples interviews from legendary American jazz singer Nancy Wilson, a rare interview from Henri Matisse and more, as if showing his workings for the plethora of inspirations that define the reverence of his music.

The EP prior to the album was titled jazz is for ordinary people, and this is music that cuts through the somewhat impenetrable barrier of the genre for many younger and more casual listeners. berlioz’s version of jazz is far from watered-down but provides a danceable and accessible entry point to a new generation of fans.

Brooke Combe

Months after winning Rolling Stone UK’s Play Next Award, Brooke Combe delivered a debut album that reflects her brilliant mantra: make the UK soulful again. The soaring, strings-backed ‘This Town’ fulfils that mantra perfectly, while ‘L.M.T.F.A’ pits Combe’s powerhouse vocals against a brilliantly scathing message. It’s more than enough to show she’s next in line to wear the UK’s soul crown.

“I’m from Scotland, and you don’t really hear a lot of soul from here. Since Paolo Nutini, I’m missing that thing from Scotland,” she told Rolling Stone UK last year. “I’ve grown up in a relatively white constituency, and I’m doing it for my people and my heritage too. I’m a soul singer, and I want to bring back the tunes I grew up listening to, and I know there’s a whole era of people who want that again. We listen to old records because nothing feels like it’s up to scratch. I love people like Michael Kiwanuka and we need more of that in the UK. More soul in the UK! We just need to expand our minds.” 

She’s got admirers in high places too. Liam Fray of The Courteneers personally asked Combe to collab on their 2024 album Pink Cactus Café. “She’s got an amazing voice and when she talks, you listen!” said Fray.

Jasmine.4.t

After releasing her  first EP before coming out as trans, jasmine.4.t’s musical story has gone hand in hand with her personal development. She transitioned while suffering with long COVID, leaving an abusive marriage and being homeless for a period. jasmine.4.t as a project then came to life as she was accepted by the trans community in Manchester, of which she told Rolling Stone UK: “Everyone is so in love with each other’s art.”

From there, she signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label to release debut album You Are the Morning, a gorgeous indie-rock record produced by boygenius that vibrates with new beginnings and resilience. Its lead single, ‘Elephant’, has already become an anthem of strength and joy, with an irrestible hook.

“Since transitioning and experiencing life as a trans woman, and [because of] how much the world sucks for trans women, it made me a lot more driven to put myself out there and represent us,” she told Rolling Stone UK last year, becoming a figure of much-deserved representation as well as a special songwriter. 

Henry Moodie  

With over 2.3 million Insta followers and a sold-out show at London’s Roundhouse last year, it’s fair to say that Henry Moodie is well on the way to greatness. His growing legion of fans has no doubt found a chord in the way that Moodie navigates universal themes of heartache (as seen in his anthem-in-waiting ‘Drunk Text’) and growing pains.

Of his debut EP good old days, which arrived last year, Moodie said: “good old days is an EP about navigating growing up. From songs about mental health, friendship, childhood, first love and first heartbreak, this EP captures what my late teens felt like.”

Brogeal

In 2025, there’s a legion of artists doing their utmost to ensure that their particular flame of Celtic music keeps burning brightly. Kneecap are revitalising Irish music through establishment-baiting hip-hop sung in their native tongue, while Lankum are putting a hauntingly beautiful, doom-laden twist on traditional folk.

But if you’re looking for the band that wants to conjure up a bit of old-fashioned bonhomie à la The Pogues, then Brogeal might be exactly that. The Falkirk five-piece deal in rousing songs that, by their own admission, reflect on long nights spent “drinking and getting fucked up”. This might be the case, but they’re a dab hand at songs that offer a misty-eyed ode to the ever-present draw of home (see ‘Roving Falkirk Bairn’).

In 2025, it’s time we had a band with the ability to make us cry and party until our heads are disgustingly sore. In Brogeal, we might have found them.

Luvcat

Luvcat starts 2025 as one of British music’s most mysterious and alluring voices. There’s the back story which reveals that she was, apparently, born in the bowels of a Parisian tugboat. Look even deeper and you’ll discover an alternative, swashbuckling yarn about the time she ran away with the circus and had an affair with the ringmaster. This is all reflected in her music. Her recent single ‘Dinner @ Brasserie Zedel’ sounds like the soundtrack to a debauched night in old Soho, while the beguiling murder ballad ‘He’s My Man’ shows she’s adept at bringing the spirit of Nick Cave and Tom Waits to a new generation.

“A lot of my music involves metaphors and and whimsical imagery, but it’s all rooted in real stories and relationships and heartache,” she told Rolling Stone UK last year. “I don’t know if it’s a defence mechanism, because I think I’m at my most gritty and raw when I’m doing what I’m doing now. It might be dressed up in feathers and lace and whatnot, but it still stems from my own very personal relationships, and I just can’t really write about anything else.”

Pozer

“I’ve never heard anyone else do my sound. Jersey drill is already its own thing, but UK Jersey drill is mine,” Pozer tells Rolling Stone UK in his Future of Music cover feature. “Drill is one of the foundations of my category, but I’m too outside of the box — you couldn’t call my music just one sound.”

Meshing together the moody atmosphere of UK drill and the upbeat, bouncily syncopated kick formulations of Jersey Club (which emerged from Newark, New Jersey, in the early 2000s) has allowed Pozer to appeal to a wide audience. With ‘Kitchen Stove’ and ‘Malicious Intentions’, he became the first UK rapper in history to have their first two singles chart in the Top 40. In February, he beat big-name nominees like Central Cee, Headie One and K-Trap to win Best Drill Act at the MOBO Awards, and his position at the forefront of Rolling Stone UK’s Future of Music list for 2025 represents another landmark achievement.

“Right now, it’s for the taking in terms of who comes in and holds the belt of ‘This is the genre for us now,’” he told us of the future of UK Jersey drill. “I don’t feel like the UK has a steady genre where it’s like ‘This is what we listen to, this is what we take in.’ I’m tryna get my style there, believe. That’s the main goal.”

Read the full Future of Music cover feature with Pozer here.

Fat Dog

The concerning issue of canine obesity might not ordinarily lend itself to a band name, but Fat Dog are no ordinary band. The south London rabble-rousers deliver an almighty sound that takes in punk, floor-filling dance and a healthy pinch of unparalleled chaos. They put on one of the country’s most electrifying live shows — and perhaps the only one where you’re likely to see mosh pits being orchestrated by blokes in German shepherd masks. 

“A lot of music at the moment is very cerebral and people won’t dance to it,” says Fat Dog’s Chris Hughes. “Our music is the polar opposite of thinking music.”

It means they’re one of the most unpredictable and constantly thrilling bands in the UK, delivering tongue-in-cheek chaos at a time when such silliness is sorely needed. Want proof? Take a look at their breakout hit ‘King of the Slugs’, which sees Hughes lay out the most achievable of mantras. “Not everyone’s gonna be a lion out here, most people are probably slugs, so just reach the top of that,” he recently told Rolling Stone UK.

Obongjayar

Steven Umoh, the Nigerian-born, London-based artist, has been making and releasing music as Obongjayar for a decade, but enters 2025 with significant new wind in his sails. His debut studio album, 2022’s Some Nights I Dream of Doors, was a delightful mix of pop, Afrobeat and beyond, while follow-up single ‘Just Cool’, from 2023, saw him excel at radio-ready funk-pop.

2024 saw him appear on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage with Little Simz and in front of 70,000 at the LA Coliseum with Fred again.. (to perform his respective features ‘Point and Kill’ and ‘adore u’), looking exceedingly comfortable at both. Back on solo duty, his totally irresistible new single ‘Just My Luck’ followed as his best material yet. With a striking look and a voice that ranges from stomach-shaking lower tones to a light and airy falsetto, he looks the total package that’s ready for his big break.

Myles Smith 

Myles Smith starts 2025 as the winner of the BRITs Rising Star Award and the man behind a song that has been streamed over 600 million times. When that song is ‘Stargazing’ — a folk rock stomper that lands somewhere between Mumford & Sons and Coldplay — you begin to understand exactly why. It’s a soaring epic anchored by a chorus that is tailor-made to burrow its way into the deepest recesses of your brain. He’s still only 26, but Smith is undoubtedly on the way to playing the arenas and stadiums that his booming voice and unifying music are clearly intended for.

Getdown Services

Driven by a desire to escape the humdrum of their everyday circumstances, best mates Ben Sadler and Josh Law formed a band where silliness and surrealism can be found around every corner. You’ll find Getdown Services in dimly lit sweatboxes across the country, tops most likely off, delivering an anarchic but life-affirming madness that the pair have likened to Dick & Dom In da Bungalow. As for their sound, it’s all dancefloor fillers, whether that’s the disco groove of ‘Caesar’ or the T-Rex stomp of ‘I Got Views’. They’ve already garnered quite the cult following, but it won’t be long before they sweep the masses up in their madness. In 2025, they’ll be delivering the party of the year.

Pest Control

Leeds quintet Pest Control have been the subject of many an argument within the UK’s heavy music scene. Metal fans want to take them in as their own, as do those in the hardcore scene. “We’re metal for hardcore people,” was the band’s response in the headline of a 2024 interview, delighting at bringing together two often insular and change-resistant factions of the guitar world.

The band’s music is unashamed and exuberant in its blurring of these boundaries, and a hell of a lot of fun to boot. Their debut album, the brilliantly titled Don’t Test The Pest, packed more ideas and energy into 21 minutes than most manage in an hour, while their live shows have ruled festivals in a whirr of energy and intensity. Their music and outlook stands as 2025’s best representation of the increasing futility of genre boundaries, and the power of pushing past them and making the fast, furious, fantastic music that comes naturally.

Mary in the Junkyard 

London trio Mary in the Junkyard are immersive above all else. The music made by guitarist and vocalist Clari Freeman-Taylor, bassist and viola player Saya Barbaglia and drummer David Addison draws you in with slippery melodies and bewitching moods. See them live at their headline shows and you’ll find home-made stage dressing, outfits designed by the band, and ‘funerals’ for discarded band mascots that feel more like performance art pieces.

“We like doing things ourselves,” Freeman-Taylor told Rolling Stone UK last year. “It’s not because we have to — it’s because we want to. It’s important to us to keep that spirit.” With this ethos always at the front and centre of their activities as a band, their entire operation is one of self-sufficiency, brilliantly unique ideas and boundless creativity, presented through indie rock that recalls Radiohead and Big Thief but with their own irreplaceable twist.

Two Shell

Fish around online and you’ll find hundreds of theories about who Two Shell are, all presumably with varying levels of truth. The electronic duo have thrived on this playful anonymity throughout their rise. They’ve played three shows in one night in London, with fans guessing which one had the ‘real’ members behind the desks, and send decoys to conduct interviews and almost certainly perform their Boiler Room debut. Enormous 2024 single ‘Talk to Me’ featured vocals from AI versions of Taylor Swift, Frank Ocean and more, before a seemingly ‘official’ version featuring the actual FKA twigs was released, becoming one of the biggest underground hits of the year.

Alongside all this doubt, the one thing not up for debate is the thrilling music the pair create. Their self-titled debut album from last year is a delightful cocktail of bubbling bass, mangled vocal samples and jerking rhythms. Whether they ever drop the masks and games or not, they remain a welcome addition to the dance music landscape in the UK, especially when they let their music do the talking.

Jalen Ngonda

While nostalgia and retro aesthetics are splashed all across the music of the 2020s, few artists truly feel like dropping the needle on a record from decades ago like Jalen Ngonda. Moving from his native Maryland to Liverpool in the early 2010s to study at the Institute for Performing Arts, where he has lived ever since, he has become the leading soul revivalist of this decade.

Finally emerging with debut album Come Around and Love Me on the legendary Daptone Records in late 2023, Ngonda recalls the golden era of 60s and 70s soul without purely apeing it – his voice is all its own, a honeyed delight. The music on the album is full of life, its lyrics unashamedly romantic and delivered with earnest enthusiasm by Ngonda, a singer with enough potential to carry an entire soul revival on his back if required. Brand-new single ‘Just As Long As We’re Together’ provides the same sugary hit and signals the next era of a special songwriter.

Lola Young

In a recent interview on The Graham Norton Show, Lola Young spoke of how songwriters should never give up hope if a song fails to have the immediate impact that they were hoping for. She should know. ‘Messy’ is the definition of a sleeper hit, catapulting Young to global fame some six months after it initially landed. 

Asked about the track’s runaway success, she recently told the BBC: “I guess it’s because the song speaks to so many people, in terms of I’m talking about the idea that there’s two sides of a person, the contradictions.”

It’s a catchy soul-pop hit, but Young’s debut shows there’s plenty more where that came from. Hers is an important, vital voice that could define British and global music for quite some time. Just ask Tyler, The Creator — Young helped him out with vocals on his latest album Chromakopia. That, and the small matter of a sell-out UK tour and a stunning performance at this year’s BRITs…

Keep up to date with all our Future of Music content for 2025 here.