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.

Witch Post feel like a band built from contrasting climates; geographically, emotionally and instinctively. Alaska Reid and Dylan Fraser speak less like a duo working on a project and more like two people quietly constructing a shared world from the places they’ve carried with them. The way Alaska talks about the last year sounds like someone tracing twin maps. “We’ve really enjoyed being able to bring one another into each other’s worlds,” she says. “It’s been fun to have Dylan come to Montana in both winter and summer.” Both seasons matter: the blinding-white cold of one, the dust and wild quiet of the other. For a band this attuned to atmosphere, it’s impossible to imagine those landscapes not bleeding into the work. The ‘Beast’ EP grew out of the strange float of early January, when time feels unanchored. Alaska remembers it clearly: “It was super icy and cold in that weird time right after the holidays, so there’s some of that seasonal spirit of anything-is-possible, everything-is-unpredictable on the record.” Witch Post capture that texture instinctively.

Later in the year, they returned to Montana to shoot the ‘Changeling’ video - an experience that sounds part ritual, part comedy, part band-bonding exercise. “We got absolutely coated in dirt,” Alaska says, “not only because we were digging in a cow field with our hands but also because we had to blow dirt in each other’s hair with a leaf blower.” It’s messy and strangely intimate; the sort of absurdity that becomes foundational myth. Their decision to sign with Partisan came from a place of long-earned caution rather than excitement. Dylan explains that they’d had “a lot of meetings with labels,” and that both had been signed before - “a major” in his case, indies in Alaska’s. That history shapes the quiet relief in his description of the meeting that mattered: “We met Tim and Jeff from Partisan for a coffee in East London and pretty quickly got the sense that they were real champions of artists.” It wasn’t the pitch; it was the atmosphere. Creatively, the band seem to operate on instinct refined by trust. Alaska admits something unusually vulnerable: “I’m a very fearful person, but luckily not when it comes to music. Being in this band has made me even more open. We push each other creatively, and that tension often leads to something really cool.” Her metaphor for growth - “an ink stain… your knowledge goes in all these random directions, and you can only see it later” - feels like the truest description of their sound.

New work is already waiting its turn. “We’re sitting on something right now… but not for long,” Alaska says. There’s intent this time, sharper edges around the instinct: “We’ve really been focusing on having conceptual parameters for the lyrics that fit with the spirit of Witch Post and not our solo stuff.” She’s absorbed by “the production style on some of the U2 albums,” particularly the “push and pull between the expansive and the intimate.” Their relationship with “scene” identity is complicated. Dylan’s answer is simple: “I have never felt part of a scene… I’ve always felt alone.” Witch Post becomes a counterweight - not community in the traditional sense, but a shared infrastructure for outsider energy. Alaska reframes the idea: “Sometimes I wonder if I’ve always done medium-outsider music. Outsider-outsider, you have a scene; medium-outsider, you’re just on the fringes.” But she feels aligned with musicians who are fearless, regardless of genre. Their plans for next year are ambitious. “A Witch Post album is imminent,” Alaska says. She also wants to “finish writing my book… fiction about a band.” Her most charming prediction for 2026? A full-blown “radio comeback,” because DJs are cool and she misses on-air stories. Dylan ends with a line that feels like the mission statement behind everything they make: “If we can make them feel anything at all, then we’ve done something right.” ■ Taken from the December 2025 / January 2026 issue of Dork, out now.