Abe Parker
Far from an overnight TikTok star, Ohio native Abe Parker honed his skills the old-fashioned way: through years of busking on street-corners, in cafes, and other venues across the country, developing an assured voice as a singer-songwriter, and an atmospheric production style working with hip-hop artists in his adopted home of Atlanta. This hard-won growth, plus a few life struggles, set the stage for an explosive debut in 2022, when Parker's arrestingly frank songs "Butterflies," "Stupid Face," and "Empty House" each quickly went viral, revealing that rare breed of new artist: someone who can quickly and single-handedly turn early sparks of connection on social media into fully-realized lasting songs. He released these on a subsequent album, Everwood, whose ghostly beauty and unfiltered emotion filled a deep need in a hurting world. And his latest singles—the dark-night-of-the-soul surrender "It Is What It Is," and the plaintive prayer "Numb"—cement Parker's place in a burgeoning scene of soul-baring, indie-folk singer-songwriters like David Kushner, Noah Kahan, Chance Peña—artists who somehow reach through the shiny chill of digital technology to touch human hearts on the other end.