We’re a music city, baby! But the talent runs way deeper than the excellent indie/rock/punk canon you may already know and love. Whether reimagining hip-hop, composing for film, pushing electronic music into places no synth has gone before, or running a record store out of a living room, these musicians are building on the city’s history while laying tracks for whatever comes next. Shape-shifters, sonic obsessives, epicurean tastemakers, underground legends, and cult heroes: These are some of the people making us pay attention.
After getting his start in the Seattle music scene playing with unorthodox noise-rockers Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive to Death, Corey J. Brewer has developed into one of Seattle’s preeminent film composers. Along the way to his current status as one of the city’s go-to movie-scoring musicians/conceptualists, Brewer has created some brilliant, idiosyncratic works that hint at his cinematic obsessions. The Destroyer Has a Master Plan (2013) comes off like a weirder Tindersticks, with Brewer’s Ian Curtis–like croon lending a loamy undertow to his dark pop sensibilities. Old Dark House’s Welcome Home (2021) is a suite of lugubrious, darker-than-thou gothic art songs written with the great synthesist/drummer Andrew Crawshaw, featuring Brewer’s baritone vocals and absolutely no corniness. Velvet Vampire (2022) is a paragon of spooky trip-hop, tenebrous krautrock, and eldritch ambient.
But Brewer really began to make inroads into the film-music world with The Overlook Hotel (2017), which reimagines the soundtrack for John Fell Ryan and Akiva Saunders’s psychedelic “backwards and forwards” revamp of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (which Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind originally scored). It’s a deeply chilling, remorseless piece of sonic sorcery. Getting meta with a far-fetched backstory, Brewer linked up with Stranger 2016 Music Genius Erik Blood under the name Blutbraüer in order to produce two soundtracks for imaginary, top-shelf European horror flicks. At once progressive, propulsive, and macabre, these albums will thrill the Goblin lover in your life.
In addition, at various times and venues this year, Brewer teamed up with yet another Stranger Music Genius, cellist Lori Goldston (who won the award in 2012), to create a live soundtrack to the 1911 silent film L’Inferno. If there’s any justice, Brewer will soon start receiving commissions to score films for whoever’s the next David Lynch… or for the current Kane Parsons. DAVE SEGAL
One of the most compelling electronic music producers on the West Coast, enereph (aka Connie Fu) is a relative newcomer who’s been making huge gains in her creativity, culminating in 2024’s Immortal Mirth. On a sheer sonic level, her music is dazzling, whether heard at home on headphones or in a massive club. As with the output of IDM and drum ‘n’ bass legends such as Autechre and Photek, enereph’s complex, unconventional music is danceable if you’re flexible and clever enough, yet also enjoyable as a pure listening experience. Her sound is perfectly poised between physicality and braininess. As someone who’s been listening to electronic music for nearly 50 years, I think that enereph has the potential to become a generational musician, destined to play important international festivals.
A classically trained pianist, Fu is also proficient with synthesizers to the point that she was employed at Seattle’s revered, now-defunct synth shop Patchwerks. She’s also a devotee of Kaivo, a semi-modular software synthesizer manufactured by Seattle-based instrument company Madrona Labs. Renowned for its ability to help forge unprecedented sounds, Kaivo makes for a powerful pairing with enereph. Fu’s skills don’t end with music; she also produces film photography in collaboration with Twyla Sampaco and is proficient at weaving. Regarding the latter, Fu told me, “I’m toying with this idea that the loom is an instrument that I’m playing, which is essentially silent, but the music it would make is the music that I’m writing. It makes fabric that’s almost like a score. What would the musical output of something like the loom sound like?” DAVE SEGAL
Seattle multi-instrumentalist Morgan Henderson has played baroque folk-rock to hundreds of thousands all over the world with Fleet Foxes and held down the low end with hell-raising post-hardcore cult faves the Blood Brothers, reflecting his tremendous range and ability to adapt. Despite these high-profile gigs, Henderson still remains below many folks’ radars. He still isn’t a household name, though the bands for whom he plays bass, cello, bass clarinet, and saxophone are.
Not that this situation bothers Henderson. He’s too busy creating compelling music in several projects that—to me, anyway—are more enjoyable than his better-known groups. At various intervals, Henderson seemingly has at least four bands going, and his discography is vast, involving several Northwest underground-music acts, including J.R.C.G., Seven Colors, and Spencer Moody’s jazzy/funky quirksters the Blind Seekers. Perhaps foremost right now is OC-EN (pronounced “Ocean”), a duo he formed with fellow saxophonist/synthesist Joel Cuplin. Their improvisational live sets flow logically while hitting upon weird strains of ambient, jazz, dub, and IDM. They’ve opened for Colin Stetson and Go Kurosawa and held their own. Henderson and Cuplin are currently working on their debut album; the two tracks I’ve heard flow in the minimalist, neo-avant-jazz stream that’s burgeoning nowadays.
For OC-EN, Henderson uses an Octatrack MIDI controller that interfaces with two synthesizers—a Moog Sirin, which creates the bass sound, and a Nord Drum that, Henderson says, “fits between rhythm and tonic sounds.” Cuplin uses a looper and effects units to correspond to Henderson’s moves.
Wow-wow, Henderson’s cross-country duo with NYC-based Pollens member Jeff Aaron Bryant, might be his most fascinating project. Their hypnotically rhythmic, bizarrely textured instrumentals sound like ritualistic South Pacific Island pieces plugged into an organic techno matrix. A key part of Seattle’s music scene for over a quarter century, Henderson creates music that gets deeper and stranger as he goes. DAVE SEGAL
There hasn’t ever been a rapper from Seattle quite like Oblé Reed. The 25-year-old hails from North Seattle and has carved out a niche for himself as a lyrically dexterous emcee with an expansive, alternative sonic palette. Since dropping his first single in 2023, Reed has hit the ground running. His fantastic debut album, LINDENAVE!, earned a top spot in Seattle Times’ music critics poll, and last year he headlined Neumos for the release of LINE LEADERS, a mixtape jam-packed with features from some of the hottest names in hip-hop. But this past December, Reed was forced to stop performing after a bout of strep throat led to a heart infection that sidelined him for eight months.
The downtime, however, hasn’t completely stopped Reed’s roll. While he’s had to take a step back from performing, he’s been producing and writing new songs that he plans to drop later this fall. He released a collaborative Evergreen State Kit with the Seattle Sounders (Reed attended the inaugural Sounders game as a 7-year-old) and took on his first acting gig as a humorously inept cashier in a Lil Woody’s commercial.
As he starts to make his way back to the stage, he’s aware that a lot rests on his shoulders. “I watched people bring Seattle to the world and rep it in their way and tell the story of the city. Now it’s my turn to be able to do the same,” says Reed. “To be able to take it on, take that responsibility of repping the city—it’s an honor to have folks back me and see that I love the city, and the city loves me back. That’s everything.” JAS KEIMIG
For about a quarter century, Raica (aka Chloe Harris) has ranked among the Pacific Northwest’s most versatile and interesting electronic-music producers and DJs. In the latter role, Harris has gone from touring the world with progressive-house superstar DJ John Digweed and playing left-field techno, electro, and IDM in underground clubs to curating phenomenal ambient sets for the esteemed Humano Studios YouTube series. The wide range that Harris exhibits behind the decks extends to her own recordings. Her productions reveal a facility for both the cerebral and the physical, with an emphasis on darkness instilled in Harris by an early infatuation with industrial-music avatars Skinny Puppy. Having seen Raica perform dozens of times, I can report that every live set is different and fascinating in its own distinctive way. That’s rare.
Raica’s last two releases, The Absence of Being and If Not Now, When (both 2025), contain some of the most emotionally resonant ambient music of the decade. The former LP was inspired by and dedicated to the premature deaths of her mother and youngest child, and it captures intense feelings of loss without descending into the maudlin. The latter evokes the psychedelic inner-space travel of the headiest IDM.
Harris is also co-owner (with her husband) of the online music retailer Further Records, which is run out of their home and powered by the couple’s epicurean tastes. For several years, they managed a label under the same name, releasing music by globally renowned figures such as Conrad Schnitzler, Donato Dozzy, Jo Johnson, and Rrose. Harris recently played the revered Movement Music Festival for the first time—here’s hoping that it won’t be the last. DAVE SEGAL
Derrick Brown (aka Vitamin D) has history. For one, he played a central role in the development of what we now call the “Seattle Sound”—a hip-hop that smoothly blends soul and jazz textures with classic boom-bap and conscious raps. This approach became the foundation from which, at the beginning of the present century, Blue Scholars, THEESatisfaction, Macklemore, and more emerged. He also produced beats for very big names: Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent, De La Soul, and the late Gift of Gab. In fact, Gab’s album 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up (2004)—which Vita produced with another local legend, Jake One—is a classic of underground hip-hop.
Vitamin D also possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of not only hip-hop but music in general. It is just staggering. Talk with him for 30 minutes, and you will leave the exchange with your head glowing like kryptonite. He knows it all: the samples used in this-and-that beat, the players on a given record—and which of them have real talent and which don’t. I recall once bringing up Patrice Rushen (the R&B genius behind “Forget Me Nots” and “Remind Me”) during a conversation. I asked if he knew about her early jazz records. Vitamin D then said something that utterly surprised me: “She had to quit jazz because her left hand isn’t that good.” Her left hand.
On another occasion, he described to a friend and me the brilliance of an obscure New York City producer, Paul C, who died at the age of 24 in 1989. He is like that. And if you deep-listen to his music, you can hear his vast musical knowledge at work, beat after beat, bar after bar. Vitamin D, who is also an educator and can often be found DJing local events around South Seattle, is a producer’s producer. Did I mention that he made the theme song for the TV show Power? CHARLES MUDEDE
