“The concepts of death and life and death have always been so scary to me, so writing [‘we’re all eating each other’] really helped me find a way to look at it through a beautiful lens, and have more peace with it,” she says.

As someone who was raised with roots in multiple cultures, Ivy explains that she doesn’t think twice about combining what some might think to be incongruous elements in her music. “I think that growing up like that, with two totally different sides of me, but then finding a way to have them both be me and not having to fit myself in one box, has carried over into everything I do, including music,” Ivy says.

At the moment, Ivy’s sound primarily inhabits a soft, acoustic-driven indie pop space, a style which can also be heard on her latest single, “is it my face?,” a heartfelt ode to insecurity. But she also has one toe in the world of hyperpop, the ultra-saturated style made famous by acts like Charli XCX and 100 gecs that pushes pop tropes to their breaking point with twinkling synths and highly processed vocals. Ivy’s 2022 debut single, “MY LIL PONY” is full-on hyperpop, and traces of the style still pop up in her newer material, like the speedy electronic percussion on “boytoy,” a track from the Playpen EP.

“I think I carried over my favorite elements of hyperpop and sprinkled them throughout this new sound,” Ivy says.

Harry Teardrop, another one of Asian American indie’s most intriguing up-and-comers, shares this genre-neutral approach. Though he drew inspiration from his stage name from “Frankie Teardrop,” an infamously grim and harrowing 1977 song by the proto-industrial duo Suicide, his own music leans more towards the wistful and reflective.

Teardrop, who is of Chinese and Vietnamese descent, grew up on a multifaceted musical diet. Though he wasn’t alive until the decade’s final year, he took a particular liking to the Britpop and pop-punk styles of the 1990s, as well as 1980s alt-rock titans The Replacements, influences evident in melancholy yet upbeat guitar-pop songs like “Discolor.” Teardrop was born in and currently lives in New York City, but in between, spent formative years in Portland, Shanghai, and Orange County, California.