George Clanton doesn’t just produce gleaming electronic pop, he produces nostalgia too. The Los Angeles artist’s process involves tweaking synthesizer presets, but beyond searching for the right melodies and textures, he’s hoping to come upon a sound that strikes a spiritual chord. “I’m looking for something that triggers a memory or an emotion,” he says. His lyrics are direct transmissions from his soul: raw, often off-the-cuff, evocative. When you pair those words with the gauzy textures Clanton’s become known for, his music feels like a dreamy filter you can put over your own memories. Every moment feels a little more colorful, a little more comforting.

You can hear the impact of this approach in his upcoming third album—take fuzz-pop anthem “Fucking Up My Life.” The track is both raucous and soothing, and as Clanton’s distorted croons echo across swelling synths and crushing breakbeats, he offers a mantra: “It feels alright.”

It’s a fitting return for an artist who’s spent the last decade cutting through the noise. In addition to making music, he runs the 100% Electronica record label with his fellow pop mutator and wife Negative Gemini. He also spearheads events, including weekly livestreams on Twitch. Being extremely online has allowed Clanton’s fans access to the depths of his personality, to connect with his work more deeply. “I think of myself as the ultimate DIY person,” he says. “Working the George Clanton way has made for a really unique career that hasn’t yet been fully recognized.”

Growing up, Clanton knew he wanted to be an entertainer, but he didn’t know how. His hometown of Ridgeway, Virginia, had a NASCAR track but no concert venues or record stores. So MTV was his primary education: videos by artists like 311, The Prodigy, and the Bad Boy Records crew taught the art of showmanship. He downloaded a lot of music from Limewire. During one session, a mislabeled download of what he thought was Oasis turned out to be shoegaze band Brian Jonestown Massacre, opening him up to the vast world of underground music on the internet, which led him to help form the scene that would dream up vaporwave.

Under the monikers ESPRIT 空想 and Mirror Kisses, Clanton became a key figure of the early vaporwave scene through his meditative lo-fi productions. The genre was then known primarily for its use of samples, but his 2014 album virtua.zip was a landmark: the first of its kind to be built entirely from original compositions. He also started singing on his tracks back then, adding a human touch and another layer of emotional involvement to the developing genre. In 2015, he dropped both aliases in favor of his given name, a symbolic shedding of creative restraints.

In order to reproduce his internet success offline, Clanton hustled harder. Moving to Brooklyn in 2015, where he worked a day job and made music at night, provided that motivation. Seeking a label but unwilling to compromise, he started his own. The label and his first album under his birth name would share the same moniker: 100% Electronica. His 2018 follow-up, Slide, further revealed his gift for deeply moving pop. One of the album’s most powerful tracks, “You Lost Me There,” was inspired by Negative Gemini leaving for work. The mild melancholy of missing your person for a few hours started to feel like the end of the world: “I just didn’t want to be alone because the house was empty,” Clanton says. “I try to find the extreme in the mundane.”

Clanton has also curated a tightly knit roster of artists ( Negative Gemini, Satin Sheets, Small Black, et al.) who continue to push the boundaries of vaporwave, internet music, and pop. He considers 100% Electronica his biggest achievement, pointing to the dedicated fans that see themselves in the music. “I feel like we’ve created a cultural identity out of thin air,” he says.

Clanton expanded upon that in 2019 with 100% ElectroniCON, the first vaporwave music festival, to give the community a physical space in which to interact. When live events were paused in 2020, he stayed connected through Virtual Utopia concerts, where artists perform in panoramic virtual reality environments, and weekly VR talk show THE BIG STREAM. Even though he had no framework for programming, Clanton taught himself to code using Python and C# languages in order to make these shows. He found a way to stay busy musically too. In a full-circle moment, he got to team up with one of his childhood inspirations, working with 311 frontman Nick Hexum on their psychedelic album George Clanton & Nick Hexum (2020), which landed Clanton on the Billboard charts for the first time (Top 100 Current Album Sales).

After a year spreading out across a number of projects, Clanton is now focusing on delivering a powerful sequel to Slide. Started almost immediately after Slide’s release, the new album finds him both musically and personally matured. It’s an elegant merging of all his past musical selves—of stirring rock, sweeping shoegaze, and niche electronics—augmented with more complex layers and physical instruments. It’s also a journey inwards as Clanton emphasizes personal reflection and self-improvement—themes he’s held close his whole career. “It’s definitely something that I need to get out,” he says of the music. “I want people to know that George Clanton is better than ever and something amazing is coming just around the corner.”

Neggy Gemmy’s (FKA Negative Gemini) heartfelt electronic pop is built around duality. In astrology, Geminis represent polarity and though Lindsey French—the producer, singer, and songwriter behind the name—is an upbeat Sagittarius, her music has always been linked to that idea. The Los Angeles-based artist delivers sparkling vocal hooks alongside angst-ridden missives, and floating atmospherics with chest-caving bass. She’s constantly swerving and shapeshifting as her interests and surroundings change: no two releases are quite alike, yet within all of their DNA lies a magnetic songwriting sensibility that makes you want to sing, chant, and scream along with her.

The breadth of French’s palette and the emotion in her storytelling are evident in her upcoming third album, whose influences range from “Princess of Pop” Kylie Minogue to maximalist dance acts Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk. The songs are layered and complex—apt accompaniment for her vulnerable introspection. On downtempo-pop opener “California” for example, French’s hopeful lyrics sprawl across weightless electronica with a ground-shaking, hip-hop-tinged bassline. “I just wanna go and never come back,” she sings. “You’re saying slow down, but I just wanna go fast.” It’s a simple sentiment, rendered all the more moving by the colorful backdrop.

“It’s easy for me to make instrumentals,” says French, underselling her meticulous approach to the craft, “but it’s challenging to make a good pop song that makes you feel something.”

But doing exactly that—making art that honestly reveals emotions, and provokes the same in listeners—has long been the goal of her work, even outside of creating music. French runs the 100% Electronica label with artist and husband George Clanton, hosts a weekly virtual reality 360 livestream on YouTube from inside a spaceship, and designs unique merch like CBD Reiki Moonbears - her new potent CBD gummy bears - all important components for creating a vibrant, fully realized world around sound. And her M.O. as Neggy Gemmy is to take full ownership of her music, writing and producing 100% solo. “I’m the only one that will do it like I would,” she says.

Neggy Gemmy was born from movement. She spent her childhood hopping around the South from Louisiana to Texas, then Kentucky, and finally Virginia for her father’s work. Songwriting was how French, a self-described introvert, felt most comfortable expressing herself. In college, she joined a rap group, where she learned how to produce using GarageBand and Logic. It opened up a new skill set with endless possibilities.

When the group disbanded, French continued to produce on her own as Neggy Gemmy. She relocated from Richmond, VA to Brooklyn in 2014 to pursue her music career. She found a home in the local underground electronic scene, a community that echoes through the sweaty club beats and crushing basslines of her 2016 album, Body Work. As ever, she experimented with a vast palette of sounds and moods across the record, but all the songs felt linked in their devotion to the dance floor—like she was writing with proper sound systems in mind. One of the album’s singles, “You Never Knew,” on which she sings of lost love over icy percussion, offered a turning point in her career when it premiered on the iconic taste making blog Gorilla vs. Bear.

Never one to stay still long, French spent the next two years touring on and off while writing her next project, Bad Baby. The EP shifted toward a lo-fi indie rock sound, glowing with the warmth of more analog instruments. French used her introspective songs to extract her deepest, darkest emotions, from the despondence of “Skydiver” to the raw rage of “Innocence.” The project proved that she’s a keen student of whatever genre she touches, no matter how niche.

French moved out to Los Angeles in 2018. The city marked a new era in her career, which bubbles sonically throughout her next album. Intended to be a driving album in a nod to L.A.’s car-centric culture, the LP cruises like a joyride down Sunset Boulevard, traversing sunny house, poolside disco, and darker, psychedelic indie—a fitting soundtrack for a story about being seduced by the city’s glamour. Like any good movie based on a true story, the album feels dramatic, but it’s real too.