In recent months, on Dazed, we’ve quizzed Tyla, interviewed Greentea Peng, and examined how Ghanaian rapper M.anifest turned imitation into innovation. We’ve also dug into Lady Gaga’s return to her freaky roots, put Doechii on our cover, and met the underground artists leading the UK’s rap revolution. Let’s not forget Dazed Mixes from Ludwig Wandinger and Mun Sing.

We’re three months into 2025, and life feels increasingly surreal and brutal. Despite the sometimes unspoken uncertainties that colour the day-to-day realities of many, music continues to function as a shared communal space and a source of collective solace. Five years on from the dawn of the pandemic, the global music community still faces ongoing economic challenges around touring, releasing and promoting music. Regardless of the difficult setting, however, new and under-discussed talents from the worlds of underground music continue to use community and craft to find a way.

For the first edition of our quarterly roundup for 2025, we’re continuing to reflect and acknowledge musicians, artists, producers and DJs from across the globe, all with strong communities, real visions, and important statements to make. Here are ten essential Q1 releases, all available on Bandcamp. 

DJ PGZ & YIKES, COME ROUND

WHO: Two First Nations producer-DJs reshaping the sound of club music in so-called Australia.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Across Come Around, DJ PGZ and Yikes team up for a suite of solo tracks, reciprocal remixes and a collaboration. The result is a deep, driving and psychedelic journey through their respective and collective visions for techno, breakbeat and bass-slanted club music. PGZ, a Gunai/Kurnai & Yorta Yorta man based in Naarm (Melbourne), started as a drummer and beatmaker before adding DJing to his repertoire. In Yikes, a Boorloo (Perth) based Wongi man, he’s found a fitting counterpart for equal exchange. When they combine their powers on the project’s glorious centrepiece, “Ouss Ouss”, it’s easy to picture the dancefloor exploding.

FOR FANS OF: Ayesha, Moopie, AceMo

PARK JIHA, ALL LIVING THINGS

WHO: The South Korean composer and multi-instrumentalist making music steeped in cultural traditions and the grandeur of the natural world.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Over the last decade, Park Jiha has played the long game, releasing what now counts as four quietly remarkable albums rooted in minimalism, experimental jazz, ambient and folkloric Korean music. Throughout All Living Things, she demonstrates her skills as a composer and instrumentalist, playing piri, yanggeum, saenghwang, flute, glockenspiel and bells and adding traces of her voice and electronics to her vivid soundworld. Contemplative, cyclic and slowly evolving, as the songs blur in and out of each other, the album unfolds as her vividly realised love letter to the experience of being alive and living in this world.

FOR FANS OF: Max Richter, Midori Takada, Mary Lattimore.

WOMB, ONE IS ALWAYS HEADING SOMEWHERE

WHO: A blended family band from Aotearoa, New Zealand, that uses dream-pop, indie, freak-folk, and ambient to articulate their internal worlds.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: If there’s a set of qualities at the heart of One Is Always Heading Somewhere, they’d have to be the feeling of watching sunlight dance across water and the transformative power of love. With their third album, Womb reach just beyond the boundaries of the D.I.Y/experimental community scenes they came up, reaching towards something more poppy but still enchanted and dreamy. These qualities come together the best on their anthemic single “Only You” and the spiritually charged auto-tune folk number “Unto”. Check out their excellent live session with the great NTS Breakfast Show host Flo Dill here.

FOR FANS OF: Slowdive, Cocteau Twins, Cassandra Jenkins.

MARINA ZISPIN, NOW YOU SEE ME NOW YOU DON’T

WHO: A dancer/musician and producer both from the North of England making songs that thread together dream-pop, electro, samba and bossa nova.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: From the opening notes of “Death Must Come”, Now You See Me Now You Don’t unfolds like a stylistically perfect homage to subcultural sounds of the 80s and a moment when 4AD aesthetics, electronic body music, and South America crossed paths. Over 40 years later, Bianca Scout and Martyn Reid, aka Marina Zispin, have flipped those crucial recipes into a collection of moody synth-pop songs that offer up sounds to keep the party moving and enable quiet reflection in the early morning hours that follow. “Penthouse Samba”, a tribute to Brazilian bossa nova singer Astrud Gilberto, absolutely seals the deal.

FOR FANS OF: Antena, Julee Cruise, Chris & Cosey.

DJ ELMOE, BATTLE ZONE

WHO: The Chicago footwork producer and DJ breathing the spirit of classic jazz and house into his hazy and haunted tracks.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: A dancer turned producer, DJ Elmoe makes music where feelings are hidden beneath feelings, contrasting rhythms overlap, and the spirits of the 70s and the 2010s catch up with the present. Fittingly, despite its title, Battle Zone is a chill album in moments, absolutely marinating in a haunted, spiritual vibe that feels like watching a mist-enshrouded dancefloor in slow motion. Across “Come Back”, sleepy chimes drift over high-octane machine beats, evoking the feeling of footwork broadcast into our waking world from a dream. Later on, in “Wander Nights”, Elmoe shifts into UK-adjacent shapes before closing with the spacey title track.

FOR FANS OF: Surly, Actress, Traxman.

BAMBINODJ, SILENT DISPATCH

WHO: A Berlin-based sound sculptor bringing the bounce, syncopation and groove of dancehall into his open-ended electronic soundworld.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Bambinodj’s Silent Dispatch takes me back to a brief moment in the early 2000s when a generation of European hip-hop and IDM producers started to take cues from the pop-aspirational rhythm-magic of Timbaland, The Neptunes and Steven "Lenky" Marsden. Twenty-plus years on, however, Bambinodj’s version of this vision is coloured by a more contemporary array of influences, flex dance music, trancehall, post-dubstep, South African house and vaporwave. There’s a stunning use of space in these floaty, utopian and globally-minded bangers. ‘Closure’ feels like a cyborg spiritual paean. It’s an incredible way to open an album that gives and gives.

FOR FANS OF: Breaka, Yetsuby, James Ferraro.

SAFFRON BLOOM, SELF-TITLED

WHO: The Iranian-American trip-hop artist blending misty atmospheric sensibilities with darkwave, electro and industrial.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Although Sepehr Alimagham is best known for the 70 Persian lounge pop and psych-funk-tinged techno, electro and acid tracks he releases as Sepehr, his art contains more dimensions. Under his Saffron Bloom alias, he embraces his love of trip-hop and its root genres. Saffron Bloom’s self-titled debut sees Sepehr leaning into the unpredictable cycles of lost love and grief over mid-tempo beatscapes straight out of Tricky’s early 90s playbook. “Dirge of the Lonely” is a masterclass in period styling. “Time’s Up (It’s Over)” features saxophonist Sam Weinberg, who takes things in a jazz speakeasy direction that sits somewhere between David Lynch and early Flying Lotus. Saffron Bloom is a vibe.

FOR FANS OF: Whatever The Weather, Massive Attack, Raz Mesinai.

TIME COW, SCARING 1100 CHICKENS TO DEATH

WHO: An experimental dancehall producer from Jamaica throwing a cornucopia of interlinked genres into his instrumental stew. 

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Thanks to his work in the progressive dancehall production collective Equiknoxx Music, Jordan ‘Time Cow’ Chung has developed a reputation for combining unexpected sonics with sturdy riddims that stretch the borders of his home genre while connecting the dots with others. His first major solo release since Live Prog Dancehall From Home for Boomkat’s Documenting Sound series, Scaring 1100 Chickens To Death, is a reminder of his brilliance as a beat scientist and modern humorist. Opener “Mind Controlled Alligators” kicks things off with flickering, chirpy melodics and a spring-loaded backbeat. Settle in for a surrealist journey through sound, Time Cow style.

FOR FANS OF: Kelman Duran, Nídia, Stereotyp.

X-CETRA, SUMMER 2000

WHO: A group of teenage girls from Santa Rosa, California, who recorded a naive, beautiful and weirdly wise oddball pop album 25 years ago.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: I find it hard to imagine we’ll hear a more playful reissue this year. A golden-hued collection of “Super sweet sleepover core from the turn of the millennium,” Summer 2000 represents a staggering fusion of girl group R&B, trip-hop, experimental pop and electronica, capturing a suite of big teenage feelings. Starting out whimsical, the sentiment gets deeper, ending with the heartsick closer ‘Fly Into Your Arms’. That said, if you’re going to be deadly serious, you’ve got to let your hair down as well. As they sing on ‘Summer 2000’, “Party til 2, sleep til 1, come on baby let's have some fun.”

FOR FANS OF: Teresa Winter, Sugababes, early Timbaland.

YUMIKO MORIOKA & TAKASHI KOKUBO, GAIAPHILIA

WHO: Two low-key legends of Japanese new age and ambient music teaming up for a second sunrise.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: A harmonious meeting ground between Yumiko Morioka’s free-flowing piano compositions and Takashi Kokubo’s calming electronic sound design, Gaiaphilia is a blissfully utopian tribute to the natural world that surrounds us. It’s a reminder of our deeply interconnected relationship with Mother Earth, Gaia, whatever you call it. As they put it, “From our love and concern for our planet, we both offer a unique sensibility and spirit of inquiry which we express through our music.” Unfolding like a complex series of interconnected rivers and streams running through a lush, verdant forestscape, Gaiaphilia is a genuine balm. It’s well worth listening to in these unpredictable times.

FOR FANS OF: Hiroshi Yoshimura, Brian Eno, Patricia Wolf.