This segment features artists who have submitted their tracks/videos to She Makes Music. If you would like to be featured here then please send an e-mail to helen@shemakesmusic.co.uk. We look forward to hearing from you!
Synthasia
Synthasia is an electro/dream/indie pop artist, producer and songwriter from London. She combines rich breathy vocals with cinematic, impactful choruses drawing inspirations from Del Water Gap, Suki Waterhouse and OTNES.
With her second single, ‘REMEMBER ME’ she is set to captivate listeners with her signature blend of introspective, emotive storytelling and cinematic productions. Her music explores themes of love, nostalgia, and longing, creating a soundscape that’s both deeply personal and universally resonant.
‘Remember Me’ is a relatable, electro/indie pop song focusing on the confusing emotions of real love that can’t last. Its upbeat, cinematic instrumental complemented by soft, intimate vocals creates a bittersweet feeling between holding on and letting go.
Elly Hopkins
Critically acclaimed vocalist Elly Hopkins makes her debut original release with ‘Cecile’: a song about jealousy. For fans of CMAT, Margaret Glaspy and Julia Jacklin, this track is a guitar-led retro classic: gutsy, soulful garage-rock-doo-wop.
It’s the lesser expressed feelings of shame and envy that drive this track – through clever, tightly-crafted lyrics and a rootsy, vintage pop sound, ‘Cecile’ tussles with the dejection of being eclipsed by a big star. At a time when social media amplifies feelings of isolation and inadequacy, and constant comparison erodes our inner calm, this song conjures a relatable experience – when we’re not the one in the spotlight, but close enough to feel its heat.
With 61% of millennials reporting that social media harms their well-being, and over half feeling anxious from constant comparison (ElectroIQ), ‘Cecile’ is timely. Elly Hopkins channels the quiet turmoil of being eclipsed—on stage or online—into a soulful, guitar-driven track that’s as raw as it is relatable. It’s a reminder that jealousy and shame, though rarely spoken, are part of being human.
She explains, “I had this experience on stage at a gig where I was made to feel so small in the shadow of this megastar – it really knocked me, and silenced me. It made me appreciate how important it is to lift each other up – especially as women in music.”
Melizza
Melizza makes music for the moments in between — the bold ones, the soft ones, the ones you don’t post but feel the most. Based in Switzerland, she blends catchy pop with raw emotions and dreamy visuals. Each song is a little world she builds herself — written, sketched, sung, styled. Think sunset drives, deep thoughts, and main character energy. Melizza isn’t just making music. She’s making space.
You know that feeling when you’re into someone and you just wanna be their favorite person? Not one of many – but the one. That’s exactly what ‘only one you need’ sounds like. Melizza’s new summer pop track is giving moody, catchy, dangerously flirty. It’s the kind of song you blast while getting ready for a night out, dancing in your room like the main character, secretly hoping they’ll text first.
With smooth vocals, addicting melodies, and a beat that makes your heart race a little more – ‘only one you need’ brings all the feels without slowing down. It’s confident, it’s vulnerable, it’s got that bold energy of someone who knows what and who they want. It’s a lyric that hits, especially if you’ve ever given your heart to someone and wondered if they’d give theirs back – BUT make it danceable.
SHAGGO
SHAGGO is a queer femme punk band based in Brooklyn, New York. The band was born out of a shared admiration for the 60s band The Shaggs. SHAGGO writes silly songs but SHAGGO is no joke.
Chores is SHAGGO’s debut album, out now via Atlanta Zone Records. It’s a raw, high-energy punk record, with hints of shoegaze. It’s about chores in a literal sense, and also how maintaining friendships and relationships can feel like a chore. Chores is a coming-of-age album; it’s about menial tasks, and finding meaning in the mundane.
“’City MD’ is one of the first songs we wrote together as a band,” say SHAGGO about one of the stad out tracks. “It’s a bit of a departure from our normal punk sound, and we like how it feels different/a bit more dramatic and closer to shoegaze- I think that’s why we usually like to close our sets with it. It’s about something pretty mundane, like a lot of our songs are – getting something stuck in your eye, having to go to City MD (the local urgent care in NYC). But we wanted to dig a bit deeper into this moment and expand on it – we realized this story was more about a sour relationship, being with someone who tells you everything is ok when it’s pretty clear it’s not.”
Banana Plague
Budapest based Banana Plague is a new alt-pop band with the elemental power of two songwriters called Annie Lane (vocals) and Frank Waters (vocals, guitar, production). Viktor Juskan, a classically trained musician plays on bass guitar. They played club concerts in Budapest and nearby, leaving people exhausted from dancing behind them. The formation delivers songs with afrobeat rhythms and city-pop elements to the alternative indie scene. They compose danceable tunes for rebels and take a hold of you with their raw, expressive but also soft and dreamy vocals. Their first album Poptogon is out now.
“‘Wishbone’ is based upon my experiences with masturbation and the shame that we learned from our parents, religion, and society,” says Annie. “I spent ten years in Christian school and I know a lot of girls who feel really bad about it. But girls don’t talk about this. At all. And I felt like I want to do it for them.
“Being a singer-songwriter in Banana Plague is the best thing on earth because I can sing about whatever I want to. There are no taboos. Frank’s songs often criticizes and makes fun of social norms for example in ‘Just Like That’ and in ‘Couldn’t Care Less’. ‘Not Serious’ is a song Frank written for me. He’s a feminist and made me a feminist too.
“Poptogon is a mixture of us both musically and lyrically. Frank writes and sings dance songs very powerfully while I have a lighter voice and a dreamy attitude. But we’re both rebels and we have the same message for you: Don’t obey anyone!”
Lipstick Teef
Liverpool bred and now London based alternative rock band LIPSTICK TEEF are on a mission to deliver surf inspired grunge from across the cosmos, straight to your eardrums. Formed in 2021 as the teenage brainchild of vocalist Lucy Pengelly and guitarist Jennifer Hall, Lipstick Teef quickly became a part of Liverpool’s DIY scene, before gaining ground in London and Manchester. And though playing for sold-out crowds in venues including the o2 Academy and Arts Club Liverpool doesn’t come without obstacles, the inevitable misogyny faced as an all female band has allowed Lipstick Teef’s belligerent, fuzz fueled songwriting style to flourish and mature. As the four piece developed their sound, they became increasingly inspired by bands of the ‘psych/punk’ realm which is evident in their debut single ‘Sink Or Swim.’
The band has this to say on the song: “Nostalgia is often looked on fondly and warmly, ‘Sink or Swim’ is about the opposite of that. It’s about accepting that nostalgia can make the past look much better than how it really happened, and that not idealising the past can make you feel much more free in the present.”
Gory
Gory is a gypsy singer songwriter and a guitarist who travels from one village to another to fulfil her purpose as an artist. With an adventurous soul and hunger for music, Gory is known for her original songwriting and unique guitar style. She loves to bend rhythm and lyrics in a way that can leave one in a musical trance.
Despite always wanting to be a cricketer and later on getting influenced by multiple genre artists, always meeting nomad musicians and getting inspired from them she ended up finding her own style “Gypsy Rock’’.
She has made lot of mistakes in early ages of her music, struggling to find her voice and style and she thinks mistakes are the one who make you the person who you are today. Whether busking on a street, playing for kids in school, crashing at a wedding or playing with local band in venues or playing alone with her guitar, Gory makes sure to give everyone a ride of an alien spaceship to an unknown world.
Emerald Ground Water
Emerald Ground Water is the musical project of songwriter Katy Hellman and is based in Burlington, Vermont. This project is a contemporary exploration of ancestry, mythology and storytelling as at tools for making meaning in our lives. The songs weave worlds together, connecting ancestral celtic sounds with elements of psychedelic rock, freak folk and prog rock. The music serves as a portal to awaken the mythic imagination and stir a sense of remembering, encouraging listeners to return to the wellspring of inspiration and connection deep within.
She has just released her new album The World Below. “This album is inspired by the richness of inner world journeys, the potency of ancestral sounds and the archetypal wisdom of fairytales and myths that help us remember how to be human,” she explains. “The songs on the album explore many different underworld and otherworld journeys. The title track, ‘The World Below’, explores the experience of hearing the call and of being beckoned to delve into the depths of the underworld. It moves through the fear and disorientation that are a part of that descent, as all that we depend upon in the upper world no longer provides support. And it shares of the deep, deep care that can be found there and that can support us in feeling held in our wholeness, depth and power.”
Crybaby Claire
Crybaby Claire is a Norwegian-Pakistani artist making dreamy, introspective pop. Last year she released her debut EP YOU SHOULD ALL BE CRYING. Now she returns with new single, ‘DUNYA’. It’s a soft, meditative track that blends atmospheric textures with subtle South Asian influences – ending with a chorus sung in Urdu.
“I am always longing for summer – this was my way of preserving that feeling,” she says. “The trees, the wind, the light. Usually I am an overthinker, but suddenly I was breathing and just soaking everything in. It means a lot to me to bring more of my cultural background into this song, something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I only speak Urdy with my parents, so using my own language towards the end of the song feel deeply personal and intimate.”
Carly Shea
Carly Shea is a bicoastal musician with NYC roots creating songs in the realm of alternative R&B and pop.
She accomplished Grammy eligibility with her last release ‘Feel Like This,’ which made it onto last year’s official ballot for the “Best Pop Solo Performance” category. She also landed a first major sync for the upcoming second season of hit Amazon series Cross for an upcoming single.
This year she was invited as an artist partner with United Masters and plans to release ‘Take It Personal’ alongside several upcoming tracks.
‘Take It Personal’ is an alternative R&B/pop track that invites listeners to fondly reminisce on past love. It was produced by UK-based artist Jedidiah Allcock.
Check out more of our recent submissions via the playlist below!
