underscores

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. + opened up for Porter Robinson
& 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 collabs with Oklou,
Yaeji and more. The world eagerly awaits the new underscores music
knowing it will jolt us 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.”