11 Phenomenal Underground Artists That Deserve Your Attention

The age we live in is increasingly technologically-savvy, a fact which is both a blessing and a curse for the music industry. Whilst the illegal downloading of MP3 files has become more of a problem for musicians to counter, the last decade has seen an explosion of artists burst onto the charts, with all credit going to the internet. I don't have to look far for evidence of that in my home city: Sheffield, as back in 2003 Arctic Monkeys shared full versions of some of their songs on their website in an effort to broaden their fanbase. The word spread and sure enough, things have definitely worked out in their favour, with the band having played a sold-out Madison Square Garden gig in February earlier this year. It's become increasingly easy for people to share their musical accomplishments with the world. Budding singer/songwriters and bands no longer have to rely on tiresome TV show formats such as the X Factor or Britain's Got Talent to get their work noticed. Instead they can upload their music to websites such as YouTube, SoundCloud and Tumblr in order to broadcast their passion and talent across the world. There are some phenomenally talented musicians out there alongside the more embarrassingly bad examples whose parents did them a disservice when they said "That sounds super, honey!". If you haven't got hours at your disposal to trawl the deepest crevices of the internet and unearth this crème de la crème of talent, then don't fear: that's our job. In this article I've compiled a list of 11 artists from a variety of genres that are fairly underground at present, but deserve to be brought out into the open.