Around this time every year, while everyone else is busy debating the song of the summer, we like to take the opportunity to zero in on the most interesting artists shaping music right now. For Highsnobiety Music Week 2026, this meant shining a spotlight on the alternative R&B visionary Kelela, the rapper-producer wunderkind Feng, and the underrated country-pop prophet Noah Cyrus.
As disparate as their genres and career arcs are, what unites our Music Week stars is a shared moment of serious transformation: We're meeting three culture-shaping artists each at a major turning point in their respective work. For her story on Kelela's New Avatar, writer Brittany Spanos digs into the musician's new album and its surprising turn toward a "fuzzy, grunge-y, guitar-forward" sound, with touches of "everyone from D'Angelo to Linkin Park."
Meanwhile, in Feng's Underground Is Fun, writer Erica Campbell catches the young British world-builder at a transitional moment between his first (and sold-out) U.S. tour. and his upcoming EP, Summer at Lake Pine, which will mark a darker, layered departure from his usual technicolor punk persona.
And in Noah Cyrus Is Everyone's Favorite Dark Horse, writer Quinn Moreland unpacks the youngest Cyrus' musical lineage and her recent declarative path into indie-tinged Americana (as well as her amazing "Little Goth on the Prairie" style).
Taken together, these three stars and their stories a compelling portrait of our current moment in music. "I think that music fans, like fans in other spaces right now, are hungry for people who will cut the bullshit," as Highsnobiety deputy editor Claire Landsbaum explains. "They don't want some perfect, polished pop avatar; they're looking for artists who feel real." The other common thread behind our Music Week cover stars, then, is their ability to succeed by essentially doing the same thing: leaning into what sets them apart.
"They've all developed fan bases for being very much themselves in their music and in their public-facing lives," as Claire says. "There's still mystery, but there's also a frankness that I think makes people able to connect to them. "
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