5 rising Asian indie artists for your late-summer playlist

Late summer needs music that can survive several settings: a humid walk home, a quiet train, a crowded room, and the point in the evening when everyone finally starts dancing. These five artists arrive from different corners of Asian and diaspora indie music, with fresh releases that make a tidy five-song route from soft reset to full-volume release.

1. Jemerine Chan

Malaysian-born and London-based, Jemerine Chan writes, produces, arranges, and engineers her own music. Her July debut album, Reset, treats genre as an emotional tool, moving between house-pop, alternative pop, folk textures, and hyperpop across nine tracks. That range feels earned from an artist who moved to London at 18 to study electronic music production and has since helped advocate for East and Southeast Asian musicians through UK ESEA Music. Start with “Trouble,” the bright, heavy hyperpop track Chan made in seven days for a production competition. It captures her best quality: technical control without sanding away the fun.

2. rhyu

Singaporean singer-songwriter rhyu, short for Raine Hahn Yu, has a low, lightly raspy voice that gives even her sweetest melodies some gravity. She began releasing music in 2022 and built an audience around songs that pull jazz and R&B into intimate indie pop. Her third single of 2026, “Pity,” arrived July 17 and catches the weary flirtation of a situationship that refuses to become official. The production stays warm and uncluttered while rhyu asks for an answer. If the directness appeals, continue with “Kaleidoscope” or her 2025 EP It’s Pouring for the dreamier side of her writing.

3. HANRORO

HANRORO is already a major new voice inside South Korea. February brought the Korean Music Awards’ Musician of the Year honor for her Grapefruit Apricot Club EP, and August will bring her Summer Sonic debut in Tokyo. Her songs pair clear-eyed writing about youth with rock arrangements that know when to swell and when to leave a thought exposed. Start with “Game Over?”, released in April. HANRORO frames kindness as a difficult choice in a world organized around winning, then pushes the song toward a cathartic promise to keep looking for love beyond hate. The emotional lift should work especially well on a festival stage.

4. glumroll

Seoul-based producer and songwriter glumroll makes music for listeners who like their pop edges left visible. Born in Korea, raised across several countries, and now working in Seoul after graduating from Berklee, she folds hyperpop, shoegaze, ambient electronics, and Korean cultural memory into her debut EP, PrettyNabi. Its five tracks move between kinetic and inward moods without losing the producer’s hand behind the details. Start with “wonder,” the closing track, where glitchy textures give way to a towering shoegaze release. Then return to “real2feel” for the opposite pole: quick, bright K-jersey club energy and a sharp appetite for something genuine.

5. Wasia Project

British-Chinese siblings Olivia Hardy and Will Gao grew up playing classical music together in South London, then built Wasia Project around the freedom to move between piano pop, jazz, electronic music, and strings. Their debut album, Nocturne, arrives September 18 after a run of intimate piano shows across Southeast Asia and Australia. New single “Whale Call” is the late-night choice here. Written around the loneliness of trying to reconnect with someone who seems closer to somebody else, it places Hardy’s vocal against guitar and strings without rushing the ache. Follow it with “2515” to hear the colder, club-adjacent direction opening up around the album.

Played in order, the five tracks move from Jemerine Chan’s release-valve rush to Wasia Project’s after-hours comedown. That is enough range for one evening, and five inviting reasons to keep exploring.