Since 2016, Your EDM has endeavored to feature 40 completely new artists, every year, that we believe will achieve great things the following year. As of this year’s list, that means we have previously featured 280 unique artists over the course of seven years. The list has evolved in its early years from simply “which big artists have albums to look out for next year” to “who are the smaller artists that are doing something exceptional,” meaning we have had the opportunity to feature an incredible number of talented producers and musicians, many of whom have truly gone on to become powerhouses in their communities and genres.
Coming into the eighth year of Your EDM’s Top 40 Artists to Watch, this year’s list proved to be a bit more difficult (but no less fulfilling). The list is actually drafted from the beginning of every year, keeping watch on who’s doing some cool things, who’s being booked to support the top artists as future rising stars, and more. Toward the middle of this year, our list was corrupted and we lost all the names. We did our best to recreate it, but at the same time, things can change over the course of six months.
When we asked our followers on Twitter exactly one month ago today who they wanted to see on the list this year, we found a huge number of names we hadn’t seen, and many we’ve known of for a while that simply slipped the mind.
REMNANT.exe, RemK, Sora, and A Hundred Drums (our featured artist for the list this year) have been on our radar for years. And for whatever reason, they maybe didn’t make the short list or someone else popped off just a bit harder. We’re happy to finally have them on our list for 2023.
Others, in the case of Matt Barri, Lost in Beijing, So Sus, onumi, OLAN, Skellytn, zoska, or Ninajirachi, really entered our frame of consciousness this year or late last year and have been so truly relentless in the pursuit of their own art that they’ve shined in 2022 and are surely destined for big things next year.
And then there’s isqa, the not-forgotten-but-revived alias of No Mana, who we featured in our inaugural list in 2016, that has come back this year courtesy of Rezz’s newly-minted label HypnoVizion. Sporting such a sonic legacy but having been inactive for the past 7-8 years, it’s only fair that we bring this spectacular project to the attention of the masses.
As we do every year, we’ve picked 40 artists who we feel will have an incredible year in 2023, not just in their own personal careers, but also on the electronic music scene as a whole. As a reminder, we do our best not to repeat names year after year so as to give new artists the spotlight. So if you don’t see the name of an artist you feel has had a great year and is destined for more, it’s more than likely we featured them in the past six years.
2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022
See Your EDM’s Artists To Watch in 2023 list below. Congratulations to all who are featured! We expect big things of you next year.
(in no particular order)
Matt Barri | Lost in Beijing | Ninajirachi | Skellytn | A Hundred Drums
Mary Droppinz | W IN K | Skybreak | Hamdi | Atura | DOIL
Phantasm | LYNY | ELIMINA | OLAN | isqa | Protial
juuku | Eyezic | sxth sns | Sora | ALLIESUN
PLAIN | CHYL | Jasper Tygner | Tom Jarmey | onumi | RemK
Low Poly | REMNANT.exe | Pocket | MSFT | So Sus | Joel Cruz
zoska | camoufly | Ivoryghost | AK RENNY | MashBit | Kosu.