OnesToWatch: The Weekly Recap

Welcome to the OnesToWatch newsletter, the best way to discover your new obsession and keep up with the best releases of the week.

There is a particular catharsis that Novulent has built a career around: the ability to make devastation feel strangely beautiful. On “self destruct,” the Texas artist leans into that tension once again, delivering a shoegaze-laced anthem that transforms heartbreak into something far more powerful. As the first glimpse into the forthcoming VOL. 3 Deluxe, the single serves as both a return to familiar emotional territory and evidence of how much Novulent has grown within it.

Just two weeks after the release of her first single of 2026 “le le,” Bb trickz is back with another banger: “a la mala.” Both of these new singles feature Hudson Mohawke production and a high-energy yet abrasive rock-leaning aesthetic, shifting her sound towards something decidedly more experimental rather than her traditional latin drill style.

DeathbyRomy has always found beauty in destruction. On “Manic Dream,” the Los Angeles artist revisits adolescence through all of its sharpest contrasts, where invincibility exists alongside anxiety and freedom often arrives hand in hand with self-sabotage. Wrapped in industrial-pop textures and towering melodies, the track transforms those memories into something almost cinematic. It is a song suspended between past and present, tracing the distance between the girl Romy once was and the woman she has become.

There are those moments before you open a door, when you already know what’s on the other side, yet you hesitate anyway. That’s the feeling Ama builds in the opening moments of “Holding Back”: a single string figure, eerie, patient and seductive.

Isabel Dumaa’s latest single “You Don’t Know Me” arrives as a poised reset, signaling the start of a new era nearly two years after her breakout EP Just My Nature. Now stepping into a new partnership with Lucille Records/Republic Records and WME, she returns with a track that does not really introduce itself so much as it reveals a shift in real time.

Some albums don’t unfold so much as they slip through your fingers while you’re listening to them. Rumspringa, the second record from ear via A24 Music, lives in that exact sensation. It feels like trying to hold a conversation while the room keeps subtly changing shape, where meaning arrives in fragments and then dissolves before it fully settles.

• Singer/songwriter/guitarist Towa Bird will launch a North American headline tour on the heels of her critically acclaimed new album Gentleman.

• Devon Again has stardom on the horizon. Her recent signing with Amusement Records, upcoming support slot for Olivia Rodrigo’s Unraveled Tour, new addicting single “snake the drain”, and longstanding OTW history make her a no-brainer for our Pride Artist of The Month.

• Press play on our #NowWatching playlist - with new releases from Devon Again, zzzahara, flowerovlove and more.