BBC Sound of 2025: Barry Can't Swim is a new dance music superstar

Scottish producer Barry Can't Swim is one of the rising stars in the dance music scene, his colorful and psychedelic rhythms have won over audiences from Glastonbury to Coachella, and he received nominations for the Brit Awards and Mercury Prize in 2024. Now, at the beginning of the new year, he has earned another accolade, ranking third in the BBC Sound of 2025 list.

This further confirms his status as a rising star in the pop music world. Over the past five years, his career has steadily risen, with each release gaining him more fans, exposure, and acclaim. When Barry Can't Swim released his first single in December 2019, it was just one of many projects from Edinburgh musician Joshua Mainnie. He didn't know at the time that the song would be a hit. If he had known, he might have given the name a little more thought.

"I have a friend called Barry, and he can't swim," he said in a 2023 interview with BBC Radio 6 Music. "When I chose the name, I really didn't anticipate it would become my full-time career, and that everyone would think my name was Barry. I really didn't think much about it at the time. Now I'm a bit stuck with it."

Barry/Joshua's ability to embark on a musical path is also thanks to his sharp-eyed and savvy grandfather. "I started playing piano when I was about 10," he revealed in an interview with Jack Saunders on BBC Radio 1, when he was unveiling his ranking on the Sound of list. "My grandfather saw an ad in the newspaper saying there was a free piano, and he brought it back and left it with my parents, who said, 'We have nowhere to put this.' And that's how I started learning to play the piano."

After becoming fascinated with music, he formed bands in his teens, inspired by bands like Happy Mondays and Stone Roses, who fused indie music and dance music in the Manchester scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s. He says those bands were "the first people to really try to merge the music I love, which is 60s psychedelia with more modern electronic music." "That's exactly what I'm trying to do – combine the more traditional songwriting and melodies of 60s music with electronic production."

Mainnie discovered the nightclubs around Edinburgh's Cowgate while studying music at Edinburgh Napier University, after which he decided to fully dedicate himself to dance music. "My earliest music production really came from the clubs, from going out and falling in love with dance music in that way. So, going from bands to electronic music was a natural progression."

Barry Can't Swim's music is bright, exciting, and incredibly danceable, with hazy house rhythms, psychedelic piano, and infectious vocal snippets blending together to create an intoxicating sonic sunshine. His debut album, "When Will We Land?", features samples of exotic Galician folk and Brazilian funk, as well as a recording of a poem recited at 4 a.m. by his friend Jack Loughrey, also known as SomeDeadBeat.

The album was one of 12 shortlisted for the prestigious Mercury Prize, and Mainnie also received a nomination for Best Dance Act at the 2024 Brit Awards. In live performances, his music is augmented by a drummer, a second synth player, and guest vocalists. The 32-year-old Mainnie dances behind the keyboards in brightly colored shirts, occasionally stepping to the front of the stage to strike poses. Last summer, he drew large crowds to the Park Stage at Glastonbury, sold out three consecutive nights at Brixton Academy in November, and will headline the All Points East festival in East London in August.

He also does DJ sets, but he says he gets "a bit annoyed" when people refer to him solely as a DJ. "I've been playing instruments for decades, and I'd already been producing music for five years before I touched a turntable," he told Rolling Stone magazine. Now, he tells Radio 1's Saunders that the two aspects of his live performance feed into each other. "When I DJ a lot, I really miss playing live. And when I play live, I miss DJing."

"Funnily enough, it feeds back into the music I'm writing. For example, when I spend a lot of time doing live shows with a band, I end up writing club music because I'm craving it. And vice versa – when I'm out DJing, I just miss more of the live elements of making music. So I feel like I have an equal passion for both, and they feed into each other, and I think that's why the transition from DJing to – not just a band, but the music I'm writing – it all lends itself to the live performance of electronic music. It still retains the basic principles of traditional songwriting but with electronic production."

Barry Can't Swim is one of a new generation of intelligent, feel-good dance music heroes, alongside 2023 Sound of runner-up Fred Again, 2024 Sound of nominee Peggy Gou, and 2025 Sound of nominee Confidence Man. Mainnie says that "more niche" electronic music like his "feels like it has a bigger audience than ever." "I really don't know what's happened in the last couple of years, but some of the music I used to listen to, and some of the very niche artists I would go to clubs to see a few years ago - they're almost pop stars now."

"You're like, what happened? But it's amazing. It's great for the scene." Almost pop stars? If Barry/Joshua hasn't reached that status yet, he certainly will in 2025.

_One of the top five acts in the BBC Sound of 2025 will be revealed each day this week on Radio 1 and BBC News, with the overall winner announced on Friday._