2025’s Music Intelligence Report highlighted a growing indie wave, powered by a new generation of artists picking up guitars and reshaping alternative music. In 2026, expect names like bunii (SoundCloud’s October 2025 Ascending artist), crayon and overtonight to hit bigger stages. Artists in this scene are fluent in pop-punk and bedroom acoustic, but also draw heavily from newer hip-hop trends like “jerk,” to make music that freely crosses traditional genre lines. It’s an eclectic sound that speaks to the youth — eclectic new indie plays jumped more than 2.5x in 2025, with 89% of fans being Gen Z.

One of the fastest growing hip-hop scenes on SoundCloud is Mexican reggaeton, with plays up 81% in the past year. Artists in this scene fuse reggaeton, trap, plugg, alternative and rising hip-hop sounds including jerk. The movement is anchored by La Obsession Factory, a Mexico City collective that released a debut mixtape in October 2025 and have been selling out local shows. The scene brings rebellious energy to a new youth movement, with 78% of listeners being Gen Z. It’s already spawning new styles: “#chugg” is a scene-specific evolution of plugg music, which itself developed on SoundCloud over the last decade. In 2026, the scene is poised to go international; in the US, plays have already doubled since July.