Artists exciting us in 2025 / July

Asia's underground scene continues to flourish, a testament to its boundless creativity and ever-expanding influence.

With a treasure trove of talent scattered across the region and its diaspora, we’re thrilled to keep discovering fresh faces that might not be on your radar...yet.

In the spirit of sharing, Mixmag Asia will be featuring a number of arguably under-the-radar artists who are currently making exciting noise in—and freshly out of—their respective scenes.

Get ready to mark those calendars and upgrade those playlists; you’ll thank us later.

Okkyung Lee is best known for tearing up the cello rulebook, but in a surprising move for her next EP, she’s ditched it entirely. ‘Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities’, out September 5 via Shelter Press, has her dive into lo-fi ambient using just a keyboard, computer, and cassette recorder. The result: minimal electronics laced with Korean pop flair, baroque melancholy, and delicate emotion. A true shapeshifter, Lee’s worked with Arca and Christian Marclay, and performed everywhere from Unsound, MoMA to the Venice Biennale. With roots in noise, jazz, Korean traditional music, and classical avant-garde, the 2025 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin fellow keeps redefining what experimental means when it comes to sound.

Taipei-based Sandy’s Trace has a knack for crafting sets that fuse abrasive textures with ghostly, atmospheric sound design; part ethereal dream, part jagged dystopia. A resident at FINAL Taipei and a core member of the avant-garde Pure G collective, he’s played a key role in shaping Taiwan’s experimental club scene. His releases span respected labels like Tzusing’s Sea Cucumber, Manchester’s Failed Units, and Taipei’s OverMyBody, with remix work for Lujiachi’s ‘Mantis’ EP. His track ‘Beholden’ even made it to the big screen, featured in the opening club scene of the 2024 Japanese film Happyend, where it was played by ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U himself. Fresh off Pure G’s June tour to Japan (celebrating their fifth anniversary with nights at WWW & WWWβ Shibuya), Sandy’s Trace is riding a rising wave of buzz from heavy-hitters like Meuko! Meuko!, TSVI, Air Max ‘97…and we’re expecting more to come.

Magis has been having a wildly busy year across Jakarta and beyond, both in the studio and behind the decks. As a key member of the Swanky Express crew, he’s been instrumental in driving the local scene—from bedroom experimentation to immersive, genre-defying sets in unconventional spaces. His recent album ‘Khaos’ is a visceral statement of intent, fusing warped electronics, distorted rhythms, breakbeats, and more. It's a body of work that spans everything from dancefloor pressure to spiralling noise and suffocating tension, and has kept us hook on each listen. Swanky Express as a collective has been steadily turning heads with their releases and events, and Magis (along with each member of the crew) is a big part of that momentum, bringing something bold, unpredictable, and deeply exciting to the table.

In 2025, HAMY is coming into her own. Active since 2023, the Vietnamese DJ did her first major tour this year with stops across Asia, including Shanghai, Tokyo, Bali, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, and Hanoi. Born and raised in Berlin, she has quickly become embedded in the city’s techno scene with performances at places like Tresor already under her belt, and notably as a resident of label and collective TILT. More recently, she co-founded BUTO BAYANG to uplift Asian artists in electronic music with fellow diaspora artist ENNIO. Together, they launched the platform last month in Bali. This Friday, HAMY will play at Feel Festival as part of TILT’s beach stage takeover and the next couple of months will stay busy. August will see TILT curate the OPAN floor at RSO Berlin for Wall2Wall Festival for the third year in a row, and in September a set at Fuchsbau Festival in Hannover awaits the techno and house DJ. Perhaps most exciting, though, are HAMY’s plans to “start working on some music with ENNIO soon.”

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