With a penchant for all things DIY, alternative rock artist bunii (pronounced “boony”) is enjoying a rapid rise, quickly becoming one of the online indie scene’s leading voices — all from his bedroom studio in Los Angeles. Now, he’s been named SoundCloud’s Ascending artist for the month of October, making him the first artist to earn the recognition without ever signing a record deal.
The Ascending series spotlights artists on the verge of breaking through, with the 18-year-old self-producing singer, writer and multi-instrumentalist joining the class of 2025 alongside Florida rapper 1900Rugrat, indie-pop songwriter Erin LeCount, genre-defying honestav and alternative R&B artist SAILORR, to name a few. You can learn more about who has been celebrated as part of SoundCloud’s Ascending series here.
It wasn't long ago that bunii was just another aspiring musician. He began teaching himself FL Studio in his early teens, hoping to make beats for rappers. However, due to growing frustrations with flaky collaborators, bunii decided to take charge of his artistry and go full DIY, switching musical styles and refining his creative approach. Already inspired by the indie sound he was hearing online, he knew he needed to set himself apart. So he embraced influences ranging from instrumental jazz from school music lessons to Japanese rock bands like Susquatch and The Cabs, all mixed in with early 2000s pop-punk and emo bands like Paramore, My Chemical Romance and American Football.
With all those ingredients brewing, bunii uploaded his first recordings to SoundCloud in July 2024. Reflecting on that time period and his first track, “Mina,” bunii shares,
“[SoundCloud] was the most accessible. And beyond that, it’s a lot better for building a real community.”
“It was the first time I’d ever gotten a song with more than 1,000 streams,” bunii recalls. “So I got excited and started trying to release as much music as possible. I wanted people to discover me and already have a catalog to go through. So ever since [dropping] “Mina,” I would release a song on SoundCloud — if not once a week, then once a month — until I had a pretty good catalog.”
His consistency has since begun paying off. Listeners who landed on his SoundCloud profile didn’t just play one track and dip; they became invested in bunii and began following his journey. Within weeks of starting his regular upload regimen, bunii caught the attention of SoundCloud’s music team, and at a time when he notably only had 381 followers on the platform.
Part of staying consistent with uploads is not letting other people slow you down, as bunii exemplifies. From teaching himself how to produce to troubleshooting one video at a time, bunii handles all aspects of production from recording to mastering. While he is looking to the future, including what signing a record deal could look like, he explains how he is in no hurry to hand over the production reins.
“I still want to have that full control over my own music, and I don’t really want too many people putting their hands on my stuff,” he says. The benefit of this way of working is that he’s entirely self-reliant, and doesn’t have to wait on others to achieve his goals. Working this way also allows him to be as expressive and experimental as he wants. As seen on his SoundCloud page, today, he’s just as likely to drop a three-minute single as an EP, or a cohesive album peppered with sub-60-second song ideas.
Since the prolific artist appeared on SoundCloud’s radar, his music has earned several Track of the Day nods, landed editorial playlist features and he even got his first billboard for his February 2025 EP, “barberry lane.”
Before being old enough to vote, bunii committed to being laser-focused on his craft and began laying the groundwork for a fulfilling career in music, all on his own terms. With no aspirations to be an influencer, bunii has opted against actively chasing viral trends or cultivating a social media persona. Instead, his social media presence is designed to exude a mysterious aura. You never see the artist himself posted online; just his trademark red-haired cartoon character. As bunii shares, this is intentional, too: “I wanted to do [TikTok] in a way where people felt cool and included for knowing who I was.”
Bunii’s latest, ‘bastard’ — titled to reference his “bastards” producer tag — is a 20-minute, 11-track album where indie means math-rock meets early 2000s pop-punk, emo and Japanese rock references. For bunii, it's his best work yet, both from a storytelling and production perspective. And even though it has more polish than his tracks from 15 months ago, it still has the same “early bunii” sound that his day ones know him for.
With the entire album conceived to be played live, we can’t wait to see what bunii does next. Be sure to follow bunii on SoundCloud, and be the first to know when he’s dropped new music.
LISTEN TO ‘BASTARD’ BY BUNII ON SOUNDCLOUD NOW
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