Origin stories reenact familiar myths; this one begins with a kid alone in a bedroom, trying to make something no one has heard before. Hailing from San Francisco, Filipino-American artist April Harper Grey started making music as underscores in middle school, sharing a steady stream of SoundCloud one-offs and building a community of like-minded fans. The 2017 skin purifying treatment EP pulled her project out of its solitary origins, and by 2021, her debut album fishmonger (recorded in that same childhood bedroom during the pandemic) launched underscores from recording vocals in a car to opening for 100 gecs on their US tour. Since then, underscores has played main stages at Lollapalooza, Electric Forest, FVDED in the Park, and Corona Capital CDMX, plus opened for Porter Robinson and Danny Brown.

Now signed to Mom+Pop, she’s garnered over 42 million global streams and continued releasing adventurous, genre-defying music, including the concept album Wallsocket and collaborations with Oklou, Yaeji, and more. The world eagerly awaits new underscores music, knowing it will jolt listeners out of reverie. That is, after all, underscores’ ethos: “When people listen to underscores, I want their initial reaction to be, ‘This is ridiculous.’ But the more they listen, they should hear the nuance and the heaviness—and I hope they connect with it on some kind of emotional level.”