Alec

Singer/songwriter Alec Wigdahl is a truly fearless artist, with little inhibition about sharing his most painful feelings. Often accompanied only by his subtle acoustic guitar work or nuanced piano melodies, the19-year-old Minnesota native delivers sharply detailed songs that resonate on a universal level.

Based in L.A. but originally from outside Minneapolis, Wigdahl took up songwriting at the age of 15, initially using music as a form of therapy. After teaching himself to play guitar by watching videos of his favorite musicians, he put out a self-produced EP called On My Mind his senior year of high school. Upon graduating he headed to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music, but quickly dropped out and returned home to enroll at the University of Minnesota, compelled to continue with his D.I.Y. approach to music. Those instincts proved to be right on target when the Internet Money team reached out to Wigdahl after discovering his songs on social media. By the end of last summer, Wigdahl had signed his deal with 10K Projects, and soon set to work on Strawberry –released December 2019, the EP showcases Alec’s stripped-down sonic palette.

Alec kicks off 2020 with a brutally honest but infectious new single called “Cologne,”which finds the 19-year-old artist taking on a more beat-driven and dynamicpopsound —a perfect backdrop to his airy vocals and romantically tortured lyrics.Produced by Wigdahl along with Internet Money founder Taz Taylor, Nick Mira, and OkTanner, “Cologne” marks a major departure from Strawberry. Despite its more elaborate production, “Cologne” offers up the same raw emotion that Wigdahl has always brought to his songwriting.As Wigdahl explains, that fearless honesty ultimately serves as a vehicle for personal connection.

“I love the kind of songs that are incredibly specific to the artist’s life, but when you listen it hits you right in the chest —almost like it’s happening to you,” says Wigdahl. “In my own music I try to be as personal and vulnerable as I possibly can, so that everyone can feel like the song was made for them. I want them to feel like I’m narrating their story at the same time that I’m narrating mine.”

Bird

CXDY

Etrou

Frankie

Jolz

JR Hitmaker

KC Supreme

Lil Spirit

Last October, L.A.-based singer/songwriter lilspirit put out a self-produced single called “Ugly,” a stark R&B-pop song speaking the unapologetic truth about a toxic relationship. In a drastic departure from the emo-rap-leaning track she’d previously released, “Ugly” showed off lilspirit’s soulful vocals and sophisticated sense of melody (a gift partly honed through his classical training in piano). As his following grew exponentially, the 19-year-old artist soon caught the attention of Internet Money Records/TenThousand Projects, who signed lilspirit to a record deal just a month after “Ugly” premiered.

Born Geno Gitas, lilspirit grew up in the Bay Area and started playing piano as a little kid, later taking up guitar and drums. At the age of 14, he began producing his own music with the help of GarageBand and beats lifted from YouTube, mining inspiration from the underground rappers he’d discovered on SoundCloud. Soon after dropping out of high school his sophomore year, lilspirit headed down to L.A. to live with his sister—a dark-pop singer/songwriter who makes music under the name Ellise. Along with producing a number of songs for Ellise, lilspirit continued working on his own material, increasingly tapping into his incredible talent for crafting melodies. “I think my brain just naturally works for melodies, which probably has to do with having so many different kinds of music to pull from,” he says. “I listen to a lot of hip-hop but I also played classical music for years, and then played jazz music on guitar. It’s like I have this big bank of music in my head and I’m just drawing from it all the time.”

As he sharpened his sound and embraced his pop instincts, lilspirit pushed himself to expand his range as a singer, introducing an element of raw vulnerability perfectly suited to his songwriting. One of his most emotionally complex songs yet, “Come Home” brings his quietly powerful vocals to an acoustic-guitar-driven portrait of obsession and destruction. “That song is about two different people at the same time: one is a person who’s dealing with drug addiction, and the other is someone in a bad relationship,” says lilspirit. “It’s based on things I’ve personally gone through or seen other people in my life struggle with, and any line of the song could be about either one of those experiences.”

A highly prolific writer and musician who spends nearly every day in the studio—and recorded more than 80 songs in the past two months alone—lilspirit hopes that outpouring might leave a positive impact on his audience. “It touches my heart when fans reach out and tell me that a song I wrote helped them get through a hard time in their lives,” he says. “But at the same time, I’m not really thinking about all that when I’m writing. I’m just making music because I love to make music, so making any kind of song feels like therapy for me.”

Manso

Mj Nichols

Nick Mira

Pharaoh Vice

Platzuz

Repko

Sidepce

Name: Dorien Theus
Age: 20
From: Tacoma, WA
When they joined IM: 2016

Taz Taylor

Turbo

A truly original and fearless artist, Turbo combines the gritty authenticity of outlaw country with hip-hop’s hard-hitting beats and rhymes. On his debut for 10K Projects/ Homemade Projects/ Internet Money Records, the Calgary-bred singer/songwriter shows the sheer force of his emotionally raw lyrics, along with his razor-sharp instinct for crafting unforgettable hooks.

Made with producers like Nick Mira (A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Trippie Redd, Juice WRLD), Turbo’s debut brings his boldly personal songwriting to a guitar-driven sound that’s endlessly catchy. On the soulful lead single “HeartStop,” for instance, he speaks his unapologetic truth about living fast with no regrets, set to a backdrop of gorgeous acoustic-guitar work supplied by 10K/ Internet Money labelmate Alec Wigdahl. Meanwhile, “Racing After Me”unfolds as a moody but high-powered epic, with Turbo building a potent tension between the track’s bright textures and visceral riffs.“ That song’s about my phone buzzing all the time from people trying to reach me,” Turbo explains. “They’re chasing after me but they’ll never catch up, ’cause I’m hard to reach.”

Born Nicholas LaMonaca, Turbo grew up on country thanks mainly to his father (a famed guitarist in the international bluegrass scene), but felt drawn toward rap music and obscure electronic genres like hardstyle (a fusion of techno and hardcore). At the age of 12 he started making his own music, a move heavily inspired by Avicii’s progressive-house classic “LE7ELS.”“Once I heard that song I couldn’t get enough of it,” Turbo recalls. “I was so obsessed, I ended up downloading FL Studio to try to recreate the melody on my own.” Although he instantly discovered a natural talent for production, Turbo put music aside for several years, then started producing again after graduating high school. “On my 18th birthday I bought a laptop and keyboard and set of speakers, and figured I’d have rappers come in and do their thing,” he says. “But after a while I just started winging it, making beats and rapping over them myself.”

As he pushed deeper into his artistry, Turbo began mining inspiration from left-of-center country singers like Colter Wall, a Canadian musician he stumbled across while stocking the shelves at his full-time liquor-store job. “Colter Wall has one of the raspiest, rawest, rudest voices I’d ever heard in my life, and it just completely took me over,” he notes. From there, Turbo tapped into his own country roots and created a full-length project titled Sixth Gear, a 2019 release featuring his breakthrough single “Light Speed.” Soon after YouTube curator Astari shared the song’s video on his channel, “Light Speed” caught the attention of 10K, quickly paving the way for Turbo’s signing to the label, along with Homemade Projects and Internet Money Records.

In the making of his 10K/ Homemade Projects/ Internet Money debut, Turbo embraced even more confidence in his songwriting, and followed his intuition more fully than ever. “The more music I make and the better I know myself, the more I’ve realized that the best songs come from me sitting in a room alone and just taking my time—that’s how I come up with something honest and timeless,” he says. “I don’t really follow a particular process. Instead of worrying about any kind of rules, I just do what I want, and go with whatever feels right to me.”

Ty Fontaine

The first time he ever cut a record, 20-year-old rapper TyFontaine came up with a track that landed in rotation on a major local radio station. Originally from the D.C. area, Ty had stepped into the studio mostly as an experiment, then ended up kicking off the rapid rise of his music career.

“The sneaker store I was working at had a studio in the back, and a lot of rappers would come through there,” says Ty, who was a senior in high school at the time. “I got a free session because my friend was the head engineer, and I wrote this song called ‘Precision’ that won a contest and got played on the radio for two weeks.After that it was just about changing things up and progressing to the highest pointI could get to.”

Now based in L.A. and signed to Internet Money Records/10K Projects, Ty is making his label debut with 1800—a mixtape that shows off his sharper bars, tighter flows, and more complex hooks. Made with producers like Jetsonmade (DaBaby, Roddy Ricch), the project offers everything from the’80s-inspired groove of “Moments” to the the massively catchy melodies of “Fetish” to the mosh-pit energy of “Huh.” “There’s a whole spectrum, because I’m always trying to go into different sounds,” says Ty. “After I make one type of song, I don’t ever want to make the same thing again.”

In the making of 1800—whose title references the concept of infinity—Ty expanded on the lyrical prowess he first brought to “Precision.” “When I started out I was mostly rapping about surface-level shit, but then I realized I had a lot more to talk about,” he says. “I started tapping into all these different experiences I’ve gone through in life, and I started going into the studio almost every day.”Once he’d finished high school, Ty headed to New York City to study at St. John’s University and immediately linked up with a fellow rapper from his hometown. The two began working together in a Brooklyn studio, with Ty often recording until dawn and then heading back to the studio the very next night. “I knew that if I wanted to do music, then going into the studio was going to teach me a lot more than going to classes,” he says.

Dropping out after his first year at St. John’s, Ty returned home and kept making music, soon connecting with Internet Money producer SidePCE(Juice WRLD, Young Thug)through an Instagram livestream. After SidePCE sent him a pack of beats, Ty made a song called “Imagine” and posted an excerpt to Instagram, quickly catching the attention of InternetMoney founder Taz Taylor and inking his record deal by start of 2020.

Already at work on his next mixtape, Ty continues to push for total honesty in his lyrics. “I feel like the best music comes from being vulnerable and tapping into things from your past that you’re maybe not proud of, because that’s what people can learn from,” says Ty. “The feeling of making a good song is better than anything, and I want to make songs that people can hear and relate to or vibe to, something that people really cherish so that it becomes a part of their life forever.”

Edgard

Name: Edgard Herrera
Age: 22
From: Tucson, AZ
When they joined IM: 2018
What they do: Vocal Engineer

Boyband

Name: Boyband
Age: 23
From: Jacksonville, FL
When they joined IM: 2015
What they do: Grammy nom producer

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