Michael Oakley

Glasgow gave Michael Oakley his ear for melody and his cover band years gave him the craft to execute it, but it was the Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode—played obsessively, studied rather than just admired—that eventually pointed him toward synthesizers of his own. His 2017 debut, California, landed with enough momentum to draw press from The Huffington Post and earn a spot on NewRetroWave's year-end list. Two more albums followed: Introspect in 2019, and Odyssey in 2021, which peaked at number eight on Bandcamp's worldwide all-genre chart and featured collaborative turns from Ollie Wride and Dana Jean Phoenix. What separates Oakley from the wider synthwave field is a commitment to the song over the atmosphere—choruses that earn their size, vocals mixed to sit forward rather than dissolve into the reverb. His fourth album, Prologue, arrived in May 2026.