Hype List 2026 Round-Up: Part Two

New year. New noise. Hype is back on the hunt, digging through the chaos, the chatter and the late-night tip-offs to find the acts who aren’t just next up, but about to detonate.

Dork’s Hype List is our annual spotlight on the artists who’ve started to really stand out – not because they’re destined for instant superstardom, but because there’s something in what they’re doing that feels fresh, deliberate and worth keeping close tabs on.

It isn’t about calling winners or demanding overnight breakthroughs. Consider it a guide to the acts shaping the edges of what’s next: the ones we’re excited about, curious about and confident enough to back as they take their next steps.

This week we’re rolling out bigger features on some of our Hype List picks, but there are loads more names in the mix. This is Part Two of the smaller interviews and mini-profiles we’re not spinning out into bigger stand-alone features, pulled together so they don’t get lost in the scroll.

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FLETCHR FLETCHR

It’s barely been a year since Fletchr Fletchr played their first pub gigs, but the Cornish quartet’s rise already feels unstoppable. In that short time they’ve sold out grassroots rooms, released the urgent, hook-heavy debut single ‘Jet Black’, and even found themselves on a stadium stage. Now, with their debut EP ‘We All Feel the Same’ approaching and a fresh run of dates ahead, they’re ready to turn early promise into something lasting.

Frontman Rohan Fletcher leads the band alongside lead guitarist and producer Adam Sanders, drummer Oli Williams and bassist George Green, who joined just days before his first show. The name Fletchr Fletchr honours Rohan’s late father, while also nodding to the makeshift family that’s formed around the group. “When Adam moved into my family home and worked at our pub, mates started saying he was basically a Fletcher too,” Rohan says.

None of them followed a neat musical path. Rohan grew up around pubs and karaoke, Adam picked up a guitar at 14 and never stopped, George saw Dave Grohl at Wembley and decided that was the life, and Oli found drums as a lifeline while growing up. From the start they only wanted to play originals, and that dedication to honesty still defines them. “All our songs have to do with real-life situations,” Rohan explains. “Sometimes they feel conversational, like I’m speaking directly to the person listening.”

That directness runs through ‘We All Feel the Same’, a record shaped by love, heartbreak, grief and growing pains. Written in the shadow of Rohan’s loss and recorded three times to get right, the EP became both escape and anchor. It’s a reminder that even in the messiest moments, connection is possible. With the tour locked in and more music waiting in the wings, Fletchr Fletchr are just getting started. 

PENCIL

London five-piece pencil head into 2026 looking tighter than ever. (Yes, all lowercase, but absolutely not low-stakes.) Built around the unusual blend of violin, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass and drums, the band thrive on ensemble chemistry: five players pulling in slightly different emotional directions until everything locks into a single, luminous mood. Now entering a new era with the addition of Soph Nathan (you know, from The Big Moon), pencil continue to evolve without losing the delicacy and warmth that first set them apart. Latest single ‘Wingman’ hints at that shift: a song about endings and beginnings, and the strange spaces in between. They’re sketching out a future that keeps getting sharper with every line.

DÉYYESS

Déyyess has spent the last few years turning fantasy into something fearless; not glossy pop escapism, but a scrappy, sparkling, heartbreak-sweet world where yearning, daydream logic and emotional honesty sit side by side. Her instinct has always been to tell the truth, even when it’s messy. After pushing through rejection and setbacks, everything shifted when ‘Claire’ found its people: a song that opened a new musical lane and marked her first openly queer release. The response didn’t just validate her; it sharpened her sense of what she’s here to do. That clarity runs through newer work like ‘Lips Like Sugar’, where she captures the thrill and delusion of a crush. It’s pure Déyyess: romantic, self-aware, a little chaotic, and completely sincere. Years of slow-burn graft have left her newly confident: touring harder, levelling up in the studio, and refining a sound she calls “sparkly grunge” – like being in love at prom while your crush dances with someone else. With more music on the horizon, Déyyess is stepping forward with self-possession, ache and ambition all intact – and a world finally big enough to hold all of it.

Y

Y don’t fit anywhere, which is exactly why they’re becoming one of the capital’s most exciting new bands. The five-piece – Adam Brennan, Sophie Coppin, Dan GB, Fells and Harry McHale – operate like a rogue electrical current in South London’s underground. Their sound pulls together post-punk angles, jazz skronk, Italo-disco pulse and sheer instinct. It shouldn’t work, yet it clicks with uncanny precision.

Their roots run through some of London’s most inventive corners. Between them, they’ve played in Fat White Family, Meatraffle, Pregoblin, Children of the Pope and Star City. Sophie calls it “polyjamory… a lot of crossovers, a lot of music being played.” That cross-pollination shapes their whole identity. Their recent EP folds Japanese jazz fusion into Brazilian percussion and reggae bass, then snaps back into warped pop. It feels less like genre-blending and more like gleeful demolition.

Their songwriting thrives on that same chaos. A warped MIDI patch becomes ‘Why’. A favourite chord progression becomes ‘Hate’. ‘Ladies Who’ grows from an acoustic sketch into something twitchy and bright. Sophie’s obsession with Marianne Faithfull spills into ‘Marianne’, an ode to a woman she never met. “When you get five people with different influences together, it helps create something a little bit different,” Adam says.

London is full of bands chasing the idea of sounding different. Y simply do. Their music fractures and reforms in real time, switching attitude and energy with a speed that feels borderline punk. Adam’s vision keeps it simple: “Life can be so depressing; we want to have some fun before the whole planet burns. We want to meet you! All of you!” Sophie adds the perfect punchline: “Well, probably not all of you. At least 75%, for sure.”

If you’re part of that 75%, Y are about to become your new favourite band.

SAMXEMMA

samxemma make the kind of pop you process with your whole nervous system. The Manchester duo – Emma spilling feelings, Sam detonating beats – operate like a two-person superbrain wired for maximum emotional whiplash. Their EP HOT PEOPLE MAKE HOT MUSIC is five tracks of hyperpop adrenaline: rave pulses, confessional one-liners, and the kind of oversharing that feels like a group chat meltdown set to club lighting.

They met because Emma wore a Charli xcx hat. It escalated quickly. “Writing together is the easiest and best thing in my life,” Emma says. “I don’t think I’ll ever meet someone I get along with more than him.”

The songs are tiny worlds of disaster and desire. ‘Gossip Girl’ catches the moment you realise your mate’s been cheating; ‘I’M SO LOUD’ claws through lust and exes; ‘MORE TO YOU’ remembers friendships built in the dark. And then there’s ‘HE’S SO GROSS’, a venom-laced takedown of a man who turned out to have a wife and three daughters. “We’d like to dedicate the song to Trump,” they add. “He is truly the grossest man alive.”

Emma writes because speaking sometimes fails her. “I tend to freeze up, so writing is how I say what I really feel.” Sam builds soundtracks that hit like a serotonin spike – pop wired with drum & bass, dubstep and rave DNA. “I like combining pop with the sensibilities of more extreme electronic genres,” he says.

They’re sitting on a vault of ideas – “over 70 mostly finished songs” – and plotting a mixtape. Or a 70-track monster, if the world asks nicely. “The Grammys, and a world tour,” they grin. “Also, we want to come to Brazil.”

samxemma aren’t playing at hyperpop. They’re baring their teeth, blowing up the template, and making feelings sound enormous. Pop made in the moment, on impulse, with zero filter. Exactly how it should be.

MAX BABY

Max Baby has a way of talking that suggests he’s constantly reverse-engineering the world around him. He doesn’t describe his creative life in metaphors or sweeping statements; he describes it in the detail of someone who has thought carefully about the mechanics of instinct.

His new EP, ‘Break’, was never intended as a concept release, which is what makes its cohesion more interesting. “Funny thing is, I realised it was a concept EP only after I finished it.” He talks about it like discovering a secret message. “Each track is a different type of ‘break’ — fragments leading toward uneasy self-acceptance.” He lists the fractures in a way that feels like confession and catharsis layered over each other. “Breaking beliefs, breaking away from childhood, breaking patterns, breaking up, breaking down, and maybe finally breaking out of all that.” There’s even a sonic dimension. “All the drum patterns are breakbeats or broken patterns – no four-to-the-floor. I guess I needed to break everything to start building.”

What comes next is split between discipline and play. “New music for sure, lots of touring for sure,” he says. Beyond that, a small personal challenge: “I’m trying to break my Rubik’s Cube record, which is currently 49 seconds.” And success? “Keep making music that’s true to myself and share it with as many people as possible.”

THE ORCHESTRA (FOR NOW)

Plenty of bands try to sound ambitious. The Orchestra (For Now) actually pull it off. The London outfit have emerged as one of the UK’s most unpredictable new forces, fusing classical strings with prog-rock theatrics and the scrappy spirit of the DIY circuit. The result is a sound that doesn’t just resist categorisation; it laughs in its face.

What makes them so compelling isn’t novelty, but intention. Violinist Lingling Bao-Smith and cellist Erin Snape aren’t peppered in as texture – they’re central to a seven-piece that treats strings, piano, guitars and saxophone as equal weapons in an ever-shifting arsenal.

Their first two EPs, ‘Plan 75’ and ‘Plan 76’, map the leap from widescreen maximalism to something sharper and more exposed. The Orchestra (For Now) worked the live circuit with a stubbornness bordering on mythic. They don’t want to tidy the edges: they want to bend the frame.

UNFLIRT

Unflirt writes in the spaces most people overlook – those fleeting, in-between moments where a feeling hits before you’ve found the words for it. Christine Senorin has a quiet way of making those moments feel immense, not by amplifying them but by paying close, patient attention.

She never planned on any of this. “Music was never something I thought I’d ever pursue,” she says, but once the door cracked open, the instinctive part of her took over. Late nights with a guitar, voice notes capturing emotional fragments, lyrics that felt truer the more she stripped them back, all of it shaped the softness and precision she’s now known for.

Her recent project centres on exactly that stillness. “It felt essential to pause and be honest,” she says, and that honesty forms the spine of her writing. For Senorin, the goal isn’t scale or spectacle. It’s connection. “When people tell me they’ve felt the exact same way, it makes it all worth it.”

Unflirt isn’t trying to capture everything. She’s trying to hold onto the moments that matter before they slip away.

THE GUEST LIST

Manchester keeps producing bands with ready-made stories, but The Guest List are interesting because they’re refusing the prefab version. Formed in 2021 by school friends turned music students, the five-piece write songs that aim for scale without ducking reality: stadium-bright choruses carrying lyrics about domestic violence, men’s mental health, and now climate dread. Recent single ‘Weatherman’ is a proper statement of intent, with Cai Alty singing like he’s trying to pull a crowd into the same urgent present. They’ve built momentum the hard way, too — support slots, a festival run, and thousands of tickets shifted on headline shows already. 2026 feels like the year that graft plus ambition turns into a breakthrough.

SANDHOUSE

Meeting at university and circling through a handful of experiments before finding the spark that stuck, South London duo Sandhouse – vocalist Anna and guitarist Caspar – first surfaced in 2024 with the confidence of a band who forgot they were supposed to start small. Their debut EP, ‘Circus’, landed in May 2025, bringing together five tracks that probed anxiety, relationships and lopsided power dynamics. It also set up their next move: ‘Make Me Small’, a more urgent, beat-forward release built around Caspar’s piercing guitar line and written to jolt their live set into a new gear. With their debut project already approaching a million streams, Sandhouse are approaching 2026 as if the next chapter is already halfway written.

ELLIS·D

ELLiS·D makes music that feels like it’s trying to jump out of its own skin. The Brighton multi-instrumentalist cut his teeth drumming in Strange Cages and touring with Fat Dog before turning his attention fully to a solo project fuelled by glam-punk mania and frayed-edge theatrics. His latest EP ‘Spill’ is a seven-track detonation of motorik rhythms, serrated guitars and yelped melodies that twist themselves into hooks when you least expect it. Tracks like ‘Shakedown’ and ‘Drifting’ capture his instinct for letting songs buckle, accelerate and snap back into place with grinning chaos. With a swelling cult following, relentless gigging and a vault of new material incoming, Ellis·D is shaping up to be one of 2026’s most unpredictable thrills.

Don’t forget: Dork, Close Up + The 100 Club present Here Comes Your Jan – two nights at The 100 Club, London.
Night One: 29th January 2026 – Alien Chicks, Ellis-D, Ugly Ozo (tickets £10 + BF, via Dice / WeGotTickets).
Night Two: 30th January 2026 – Pencil, FLETCHR FLETCHR, Pack of Animals (tickets £10 + BF, via Dice / WeGotTickets)