The Vietnamese Artists Your Playlist Has Been Waiting For

Your playlist is probably fine. Good, even. A mix of moods, some algorithm-approved discoveries, the comfort tracks you keep coming back to.

But somewhere far from the curated charts and overexposed loops, a shift is happening.

In Vietnam, a new wave of artists is making music that doesn’t ask for your attention—it lingers, seduces, and hums like an afterthought you can’t quite shake.

These voices are at once intimate and electric, equal parts softness and defiance. They aren’t trying to fit into a genre; they’re trying to feel something—and make you feel it, too.

It’s time to add them to your rotation. You’ll wonder how your playlist ever felt full without them.

HIEUTHUHAI

There’s a golden-hour smoothness to everything HIEUTHUHAI touches. He raps like someone who knows the value of timing—not just rhythmically, but emotionally.

His cadence is silk-spun and calculated, unfurling over trap beats with the assurance of a man walking into a party already knowing everyone will turn to look.

He balances the swagger of Western hip-hop with a distinct Vietnamese playfulness, often dipping into cheeky wordplay and flirtatious bravado.

Kai Đinh

Listening to Kai Đinh is like eavesdropping on someone’s inner monologue as they lie awake at 3 a.m., the ceiling fan spinning above them like a slow clock.

His songs shimmer with emotional intimacy, often guided by minimalist instrumentation—piano keys, echoing synths, even the occasional heart monitor-like beat that makes you realize your own chest is rising and falling in time.

Lyrically, he leans into vulnerability, brushing against heartbreak, nostalgia, identity—always personal and never performative.

Pháo

If Pháo were a color, she’d be neon. She entered the mainstream with a bang—her verse in the remix of 2 Phút Hơn ricocheted across the internet—but her true strength lies in her refusal to be predictable.

She’s loud in all the right ways: unapologetically feminist, rhythmically ferocious, and unafraid to play with sonic chaos.

Whether she’s snarling over a beat or dropping into a sultry half-whisper, Pháo commands your attention—and she knows exactly what to do with it.

tlinh

tlinh doesn’t sing so much as she slices. With vocals that drift between lullaby and threat, she brings a tactile elegance to her genre-blending sound.

R&B, pop, hip-hop—it’s all just clay in her hands. She crafts soundscapes where softness and danger exist in tandem, where femininity is neither a weakness nor a performance, but a kind of power that bends and morphs.

In a scene still figuring out how to hold space for complex female voices, tlinh walks in and takes the whole damn room.

Dương Domic

His music feels like driving down a dimly lit highway, windows down, your past in the rearview.

He floats between chill lo-fi beats and melancholic vocal lines, often embracing a bedroom pop aesthetic tinged with electronic touches.

To listen to these artists is to tune into the frequency of modern Vietnam—not just the country, but the emotion of being young, aware, and achingly alive in it.

It’s more than music. It’s a movement stitched into basslines and lyric sheets, laced with identity and imagination.

They are not the future of Vietnamese music. They are the now. You just have to listen closely.

Photos courtesy via Instagram