Greentea Peng

From backpacking in South America to a yoga retreat in Mexico, all the way to her first international hit song boasting streams in the millions - it's been a long road for Aria Wells. Song by song, she began to make heads turn on the British R&B scene in 2018 with EPs like “Sensi” and ‘Rising’ (2019) and scored a widely acclaimed hit with ‘Downers’. With her smoky voice and penchant for elegantly genre-hopping, the singer from London soon found her very own style as Greentea Peng - a name she took from ‘Green Tea Seng’ to be found in Peru. She mixes reggae and hip-hop, jazz and downtempo, soul and dub into a hypnotising blend of sensual soundscapes. She herself calls it psychedelic soul - and you would be hard pressed to describe her debut album “Man Made” (2021) more fittingly. It's as if Erykah Badu received Tricky's blessing at the end of the 90s with a trip-hop production that grooves timelessly through the ether. As expected, the album has delighted everyone from the BBC and the Guardian to tastemakers like Gilles Peterson. Quite rightly so, as the singer-songwriter and globetrotter routinely proves with this year's follow-up ‘Tell Dem It's Sunny’ (2025). It's been a long time since soul has sounded so authentic, so modern and atmospheric.