One to watch: Bad With Phones

If Charli XCX is 2024’s CEO of the club with her recent release Brat, then Bad With Phones could be the chairman of the comedown. His newly released debut album , Crash, blurs genres with the trippy haze of after-hours: lead single Don’t Talk to Me is a jerky slice of LCD-ish dance-punk, where he’s avoiding chatty people at a party while “really high on shrooms”. Devils deploys the drowsy, detuned guitars so beloved of south London indie artists; Monica Too sounds like the Weeknd put through a mangler.

Bad With Phones is the alias of Manny T Deroy, AKA Emmanuel Folorunso, a Deptford-born bassist and producer who has been releasing songs since 2018. His father was a preacher, while his older brothers played in the church band, and there are references to his Pentecostal upbringing among his sing-raps. But Deroy’s sound is decidedly genre-agnostic, a mishmash of weirdo rap, trap, R&B, indie and arch storytelling. With his current messy pink wig – surely a nod to Tyler, the Creator’s smooth Igor-era blond bob – Deroy looks straight out of the pages of mid-2000s nu-rave magazine Super Super.

Despite playing with characters, Crash comes from real-life events. Deroy took a two-year hiatus from music after a serious car accident while on holiday in Lanzarote. He and his then-girlfriend escaped unscathed, and the record it inspired has an arc of redemption as he weaves together tales of late-night debauchery. A singular, brilliantly eccentric talent.

• Crash is out now on Don’t Sleep