Dutch musician Monokino, the alias of composer George van Wetering takes the electronic-tinged genre of hyperpop in bold new directions. Today we’re premiering his new alt-rock influenced track, “Your Underground.”

The song takes a bit of a cynical look at the music scene, where new artists are seen as a commodity and ranked or excluded based on popularity. The music itself was actually first written as a classical piece, intended to be performed by an orchestra. Once Monokino realized the song was better suited as a rock song, he connected with producer J. Laser, aka Jordan Lawler who helped him transform the song from a straight electronic pop song to something a little more rock.

“‘Your Underground’ goes a bit further in the sense that now an entire (music) scene is trying to proclaim what is right or wrong. Although the industry is seen by some as more democratic (‘everyone can be an artist, just upload a song, create your own scene’), that scene is valued by a system that is very similar to how everything used to be: new music is promoted and liked through the lens of a Spotify playlist and its streams measure its importance,” said Monokino. “The ‘underground scene’ appears to be very much into systematic exclusion, which was already clear recently when Burger Records came into the news. But over here one creates a scene to unite people by excluding people because it fits into the zeitgeist. Something in me snaps. What is actually new and exciting is skipped while what needs to be sold is promoted as something new. It serves the big players in the music biz to promote artists being valuable to some underground community (either created or real) because of some Spotify playlist nowadays. There must be more interesting things artists can tell, right?”