Rolling Stone UK’s Ones To Watch 2025
Here's our definitive list of the artists set to rule your year
By Nick Reilly & Will Richards
As 2025 kicks off, it’s time for Rolling Stone UK to give our rundown of the artists that we think are going to dominate your year and, potentially in time, life. From magical folk stars in waiting to duos dripping with brilliant silliness, there’s something for everyone on our list. We’re convinced that all these acts are going to make a definitive stamp on the next 12 months and, after listening to them, we’re hoping that you’ll be of the same opinion too. Without further ado, let us present Rolling Stone UK’s Ones To Watch for 2025.
Good Neighbours
London duo Good Neighbours were born out of a dissatisfaction with their previous creative projects, with Oli Fox and Scott Verrill instead diving into the music of their youth with delightful abandon. The result is a brilliantly unselfconscious new band making sunny, bright indie music most closely resembling the psych-tinged wave of the late 2000s. It’s brought them a viral sensation with the single ‘Home’ and a self-titled debut EP that has made them hot property for 2025. “We were desperate to make something fun, and that you felt like a teenager when you were making it,” Verrill told us in a Play Next interview last year, and there’s an endearing naivety to this pair. (WR)
Key track: ‘Home’
For fans of: MGMT, Passion Pit
Jacob Alon
Scottish songwriter Jacob Alon cut their teeth in the folk clubs of Edinburgh, but a far more fantastical future awaits them. Their music – two superb singles, ‘Fairy in a Bottle’ and ‘Connection’, have been shared so far – honours the folk tradition while also drawing on their queer identity and theatrical nature to create sounds and ideas that feel limitless. “It’s essential to who I am and it’s such a liberation to be able to find a voice in it,” they said in a Play Next interview of how their queerness and music intersects. }When growing up I felt somewhat caged, [so] I think it brings connection to my community and the people I surround myself with through music. To have music without queerness wouldn’t make sense in my art.” (WR)
Key track: ‘Fairy in a Bottle’
For fans of: Adrianne Lenker, Nick Drake
Luvcat
A quick online search of Luvcat’s name 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.
You might have to suspend reality for a minute, but this mystery is a reflection of the cult mystique that surrounds the Liverpudlian singer and the precise reason she enters 2025 as one of the year’s most exciting prospects.
Her recent single ‘Dinner @ Brasserie Zedel’ sounds like the soundtrack to a debauched cabaret night in old school Berlin, while the beguiling murder ballad ‘He’s My Man’ shows he’s a dab hand at bringing the spirit of Nick Cave and Tom Waits through for a new generation. It may be classically theatrical, but Luvcat’s irrepressible talent is utterly timeless. (NR)
Key track: ‘Matador’
For fans of: Nick Cave, The Last Dinner Party
Nia Smith
Londoner Nia Smith deals in classic soul stylings, but the inclusion of her own musical upbringing allows her music to take on a kaleidoscopic edge. The nightclub-primed ‘Personal’ takes on a subtle dancehall edge, while ‘Give Up The Fear’ is a powerful paean to the beauty of not giving a fuck. Having grown up on a diet of Amy Winehouse and Adele after discovering both artists on her dad’s iPod, you sense that 19-year-old Smith could well be on the way to following their footsteps and achieving greatness within UK soul. (NR)
Key track: ‘Personal‘
For fans of: Amy Winehouse, Jorja Smith
Getdown Services
There’s some acts where words don’t quite do them justice and, to be completely honest, you simply have to see one of their live shows to truly understand what they’re about. Getdown Services – childhood best mates Ben Sadler and Josh Law – are one of those. You’ll find them 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 The Bungalow.
It’s brilliantly chaotic, but it helps that their songs are genuinely great too. There’s the T-Rex flecked stomp of ‘I Got Views’, the disco groove of ‘Caesar’ and lyrics which flit between wry social commentary and surrealism. Having already won over a cult army of devotees in 2024, expect their party-starting vibes to spread to the masses in 2025. (NR)
Key track: ‘I Got Views‘
For fans of: Sleaford Mods, Yard Act
jasmine.4.t.
The story of how Manchester-based artist jasmine.4.t signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label reads like a dream, with Bridgers’ boygenius bandmate Lucy Dacus playing her the demos to debut album You Are the Morning in her car, and Bridgers being stunned. The finished album – recorded in LA with all of boygenius – is a striking statement of community and resilience from a special new voice, and, as she told us last year, “about love and community and joy in the face of all the shit”. (WR)
Key track: ‘Skin on Skin’
For fans of: boygenius, Porridge Radio
Mary in the Junkyard
It would have taken a special band to be the first ever group to be produced by Richard Russell, and that’s exactly what the XL Recordings head honcho saw in these three young’uns. There’s glimpses of Radiohead in their dreamy and intricate sound, led by the enchanting vocals of Clari Freeman-Taylor. She’s joined by Saya Barbaglia on bass and cello, with David Addison on drums, and the trio make music that ranges from melodic and hushed to a barbed racket. With unique live shows featuring homemade costumes and mascots, their world-building is as excellent as their songs. Freeman-Taylor summed up their modus operandi perfectly to Rolling Stone UK last year, saying: “We like doing things ourselves. It’s not because we have to — it’s because we want to. It’s important to us to keep that spirit.” (WR)
Key track: ‘Marble Arch’
For fans of: Radiohead, English Teacher
Sunday (1994)
In the decade plus they’ve known each other, Paige Turner and Lee Newell have been many things: Transatlantic friends, composers and – to this day – a couple. It made total sense, then, that a band would be the next venture. Joined by mysterious drummer X, they deal in woozy dream-pop anchored by melodies determined to burrow their way into your head. One of their latest songs – the ethereal ‘Blossom’ – employs vintage soundscapes but sounds thoroughly modern at the same time. (NR)
Key track: ‘Blossom‘
For fans of: Alvvays, Cocteau Twins
Gurriers
It’s hard to sugar-coat the uncertain state of the world in 2025, but it’s good to know that bands like Gurriers can channel universal feels of rage and confusion into an almighty racket.
“There’s an anger and disappointment and disillusionment with the world, and the Catholic Church, and nightclubs,” singer Dan Hoff recently told RS UK of their debut album Come And See. It’s a record capable of putting a sizeable fire in your belly and fighting back against the darkness. In 2025, expect to see them taking that fight to far bigger audiences. (NR)
Key track: ‘Top Of The Bill‘
For fans of: Sprints, IDLES
MRCY
“MRCY are on the path to becoming the UK’s next great soul group,” we claimed in a 2024 interview with Kojo Degraft-Johnson and Barney Lister. The pair bring a fresh and dynamic update to the genre, created out of a Brixton studio with ambitions far beyond its damp walls. Meeting – as many new groups do – with Lister finding Degraft-Johnson via the covers he posted on Instagram, an immediate and unique chemistry was apparent from the off, with debut single ‘Lorelei’ seeing the later laying silky smooth beats on which the latter presents a dizzying and timeless voice. (WR)
Key track: ‘Lorelei’
For fans of: SAULT, Obongjayar
oreglo
London quartet oreglo came through the same vital youth club systems in the capital as Ezra Collective, Moses Boyd and countless others. The quartet – c-sé (keys), Linus Barry (guitar), Nicco Rocco (drums) and Teigan Hastings (tuba) – bring influences from classic rock to jazz, electronic and more, with their musical education serving as a reminder of the power of in-person collaboration in the digital age. Gilles Peterson was an early supporter, signing them to his Brownswood Recordings label, and debut EP Not Real People starts off from a base of modern jazz before swerving delightfully towards psych rock and beyond. (WR)
Key track: ‘levels’
For fans of: Ezra Collective, Nubya Garcia