mal sounds’ calming dream-pop will make you look at the world in a whole new way

In partnership with BandLab Though mal sounds was born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the neighbourhood he still calls home today, the origins of his artist project lie in Valencia. In early 2020, he flew to Spain to visit his grandmother and cousins, then found himself grounded by COVID-19. “I basically always knew I wanted to be a musician,” says mal, whose government name is Amal Buford. “But what I found in Spain was a sense of clarity. Music had always been a social thing for me, so when that social aspect was taken away, I had to ask myself: ‘What is the deeper meaning? Why am I doing this?'” After rebranding himself mal sounds, he enjoyed early success when his wistful chillwave bop ‘VVS’ popped on Instagram in 2021. Since then, he’s released a pair of equally atmospheric EPs – 2021’s ‘Freak And Wild Things’ and 2024’s ‘Still In New York’ – and continued to hone his ineffably nostalgic dream-pop sound. “My purpose as a musician is to create [sonic] spaces that can help people to see or process things differently,” he says. Now he’s been selected for BandLab And NME’s Get Featured initiative, which gives emerging artists a chance to be heard by NME‘s global audience o...