Artemas (born Artemas Diamandis, September 23, 1999) is an English-Cypriot singer, songwriter and producer from an Oxfordshire village, educated at Radley College and now splitting time between London and Los Angeles. His single “i like the way you kiss me”, produced in roughly three hours and posted the next day, hit #1 on global Spotify (8M+ streams in a week), #1 in eight-plus countries, #3 in the UK, #12 on the Hot 100, went RIAA 3x Platinum (Diamond in France and Poland), and drove nearly 2.5 billion TikTok views within six weeks. Career streams exceed 3.6 billion, more than 2 billion of them on that one song. Variety called it one of the most ubiquitous songs of 2024; The Guardian made him the face of the darkwave revival.
An only child who “spent a lot of time by myself,” which he credits with pushing him toward creativity; his mother had “great taste in music” and raised him on Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana and R&B. Piano lessons from age six (“it would get me attention from the girls when I was around 11”), a theater-kid phase in which he wanted to be an actor, and then the hinge point at 16: watching the Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck: “game, set, match.” At 17 he wrote his “first very bad rock song,” which got local radio play. Everything since is self-taught: production, engineering, mixing, an “eight-year process” of bedroom trial and error across vocals, guitar and keyboards. His Cypriot heritage comes from his father’s side; his name is a Greek biblical name meaning “gift of Artemis.”
That self-taught studio identity is the part of his story he thinks the public still under-rates. “I need to get across more that I’m kind of like Kevin Parker,” he told BASIC Magazine in 2026, invoking Tame Impala’s one-man-studio auteur. “I write all my own music, I mixed a lot of these songs, and I’m in the studio a lot... It’s probably one of the biggest selling points of me as an artist.”
“I spent three to four years releasing music with little to no listeners, which is a phase every artist endures.” The debut single “High 4 U” (November 2020) and self-released mixtape I’m Sorry I’m Like This (May 2022, still on Bandcamp) worked a softer, Rex Orange County-adjacent bedroom-pop lane with guitarist Toby Daintree, a jazz-guitar student he met around 2021-22 at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama who joined his band and never left. Distribution deals and conventional rollouts went nowhere; he later said the early distribution deal simply “didn’t work,” and the music videos and EPs the industry prescribed did no better. His conclusion: “Forget it; no one in this industry knows what they’re talking about.”
In 2023 he scrapped the entire old project: “I had been making these dark R&B demos on the side... I scrapped everything I had put out to that point, and what followed was six months that ended with having the most streamed song in the world for something like two weeks. At the start, I literally had about 100 fans.” The method, in his own words to Billboard: “I began releasing a song every month and posting daily on TikTok, focusing on creating what I genuinely loved.” It is the same daily-cadence discipline documented across the TikTok generation, from Christian Gates’ song-a-day routine to Arden Jones’ monthly tapes, executed here on total creative instinct, a philosophy he keeps describing with the same metaphor: “I want my music, my art, my career, my life really, to be kind of like an Ouija board... Just let it happen rather than trying too hard.”
“If U Think I’m Pretty” (October 24, 2023) broke first: #39 UK, #30 Australia, #42 Austria, #74 Canada, #94 Germany, with BPI Gold, ARIA Platinum, Music Canada Gold and RIAA Platinum certifications and more than 600 million streams as it built toward the Pretty mixtape (February 9, 2024). Six months earlier he had 100 fans.
“i like the way you kiss me” came out of a February 2024 LA sprint with producers Kevin White and Jesse Fink, on the heels of two small London shows at The Lower Third. Daintree: “The week that we made it was the best writing experience I’ve ever had, it was magical... we did about two songs a day, and it happened on the third.” The now-famous spoken mumble in the intro was recorded while waiting for an Uber: “it was the least thought out thing and it’s so funny that it blew up.” Daintree has also admitted he underestimated it: “It was in another session that we realised I Like The Way You Kiss Me was blowing up... at first, I wasn’t even that into the song.” Artemas’s own description: “I mumbled the melody over this psyche trap we made in the studio... I tried to embody the worst dude ever,” he considers the song satire. To The Guardian he compressed the whole origin into two sentences: “We produced the song in approximately three hours, and I posted it the following day. The response was overwhelming.”
The chorus’s signature warped vocal, which AllMusic’s Marcy Donelson called “shape-shifting” and “manipulated through either pitch-shifting or varied playback speed,” started life as a CapCut pitch-tease on TikTok before being formalized in Ableton. He announced the single on March 15, 2024 and released it independently on March 19, 2024; the day before release, the head of his label called to tell him it was going to “completely change everything and go all the way.” It did: #1 on global Spotify within weeks, a UK Singles Chart debut at #13 on April 4, a US Hot 100 debut at #70 on April 6 that peaked at #12 on April 27, the top of the Billboard Global Excl. US chart on April 22, a UK peak of #3 on April 25, and 19 straight weeks in the UK top 100 by August. More than 2 million TikTok users made videos with the song, pushing it to nearly 2.5 billion views on the platform by the end of April. On the 2024 year-end charts it finished #1 in Germany, #2 in Austria, #17 in the UK, #21 on the Global 200 and #9 on the US Hot Rock & Alternative Songs list.
He watched the takeoff happen from a plane: “It had only released in Australia and there were about five or six thousand people listening at once. Then I landed... 40,000 people were listening at once. I really do wish it didn’t feel as good as it did.”
The formula in his own words: “bait lyrics, soaring falsettos and fat bass.” The Guardian’s darkwave feature placed him alongside Mareux, Boy Harsher, Molchat Doma and Twin Tribes in a lineage running back to The Cure, Depeche Mode and Clan of Xymox; its writer Daniel Dylan Wray called “i like the way you kiss me” “pulsating, icy synth-pop” with “unabashed, unpolished lyricism.” His personal canon is The Weeknd’s House of Balloons trilogy (“I liked the mystique and the antihero”), Lil Wayne’s Nostalgia, Ultra for its mixtape freedom, Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration, Nirvana and Radiohead. He initially found his own Robert Smith-esque croon “so dumb” before it clicked. Lyrically the work runs on obsession, desire and melodrama played with deliberate irony: “I’m not crying my eyes out on the mic or anything... A lot of my heartbreak songs are a little tongue-in-cheek and over the top.” To Rolling Stone en Español he framed the whole project as licensed confession: it is being able to say things he would never say in public, but now he can sing them, “a fun, interesting experiment that keeps getting bigger.”
Visually he cultivates semi-anonymity: the LOVERCORE cover is a happy accident of a camera glitch blurring his face (“it’s dark, and it felt so cool to me”); his handles are in on the joke, TikTok @artemasaltalt, SoundCloud “artemaswannabepopstar”. The “Dirty Little Secret” video was directed by the creative studio Aboveground, and his Numéro Netherlands cover story, shot by David Reiss, dressed him in Bianca Saunders, David Koma, Diesel and Prada. Despite the numbers he told Metal Magazine he was “actually annoyed that I can still get on a tube around London without anyone knowing who I am,” and he rejects scene membership entirely: “I don’t perceive myself as part of a specific scene; I exist independently... We don’t have scenes; we just have playlists.” The artists he name-checks with respect, The Weeknd in his interview-shy years, Magdalena Bay, Montell Fish, all share the same trait: output over personality promotion.
Five mixtapes, zero albums, on purpose. He has explicitly deferred the debut-album/talk-show milestone: “I’m sure at some point over the next few years I will make a debut album, and sit down with the Zane Lowe’s of the world... but right now I’m enjoying just being very fluid.” (Apple Music put him on Zane Lowe’s “24 for ’24” list anyway, and he has referenced eventually compiling the mixtape run into a debut album in the spirit of The Weeknd’s Trilogy; no title or date exists.) yustyna (July 11, 2024), his first release through 10K Projects, was “the rude introduction to Artemas as a world and character”: 14 tracks, a US #147 chart entry, and studio lore to spare; album cut “caroline” was literally recorded in a moving car (“We recorded the whole song on the motorway. If you isolate the vocals you can hear it in the background”).
LOVERCORE (October 24, 2025) chased ’80s new-wave romance, much of it written at his parents’ house about an hour from London during a rare break from touring: “I’m essentially defining my genre, if I have one, and establishing the direction with this mixtape.” On its Depeche Mode-inflected vocals: “I was aware I was mimicking a poor version of Robert Smith from The Cure, yet I received comments likening it to the new romantics of the ’80s.” getting up to no good (March 27, 2026) went club-first: “very dark and vulnerable, but super up tempo... Berlin warehouse vibes, with great songs underneath,” and features Ella Boh on “BLURRY.” The catalog math tracks the doctrine: cumulative streams were cited at 1.5 billion by mid-2024, 3.4 billion by January 2026 and over 3.6 billion by April 2026. His writing credo: “I unintentionally keep saying some very honest things in songs and leave them in. I think there’s a magic in saying things others might be scared to say.” His performance credo, from the same BASIC interview: “I think confidence is a big thing. You can’t feel any insecurity about what you’re doing, your voice, the lyrics. You just have to be feeling yourself.”
Label: 10K Projects (Elliot Grainge’s label, home to Trippie Redd and Don Toliver, and also the label of Arden Jones), signed late 2023, with “i like the way you kiss me” itself technically self-released at the peak of the frenzy. Management: September Management (Adele, Glass Animals, Paul Epworth). Publishing: Sony Music Publishing, signed before the breakout, per Daintree, the publishing deal predates even “if u think i’m pretty.” Booking: Wasserman Music (Max Braun, Stephanie Aristakesian, James Whitting, Laura Brown). Core circle: Daintree, Kevin White, Jesse Fink.
The commercial profile so far is touring and licensing rather than endorsements: no named consumer-brand deals have surfaced, but the trade outlet ADA Music gave “i like the way you kiss me” a Sync Spotlight in January 2025 as it moved into advertising placements, and third-party event agencies have floated private-booking fees starting around $25,000 (unverified ballpark figures, not confirmed rates). In July 2024 he cut a one-take performance of “So Stunning” for the Bose x NME C24 mixtape series alongside Teddy Swims, Laufey and Royel Otis.
The 33-date You’re Really Early Tour, announced as his first global headline run, kicked off August 20, 2024 in Dublin and sold through Europe, North America (including two nights at LA’s El Rey), the UK, Australia and New Zealand; a parallel 35-date yustyna itinerary opened in Riga, Latvia on August 12. The year was capped by a sold-out O2 Forum Kentish Town show in London on November 11, 2024, reviewed as a darkwave alt-pop showcase. 2025 brought Coachella both weekends in April (“a life-changing moment”; he also attended as a fan), a July 12 main-stage set at Lollapalooza Berlin’s 10th-anniversary edition alongside Shaboozey and Sofi Tukker, where he premiered “southbound” and “test drive” live, and an August stop at Outside Lands.
The 16-date LOVERCORE Tour (February-March 2026) hit the Hollywood Palladium and New York’s Terminal 5, with Isabel LaRosa opening the run. Then came the big one, announced April 1, 2026: the LOVERCORE / GETTING UP TO NO GOOD world tour, his biggest live undertaking yet at 38 dates, running North America September 8 to October 11 and Europe/UK November 12 to December 14, closing at London’s O2 Academy Brixton. Support comes from Henry Morris across the run and Ella Boh, who confirmed on a TikTok livestream that she is on “the whole entire tour except for the London date,” 16 North American shows, the biggest rooms she has ever played. He also co-produced and features on Nessa Barrett’s “Mustang Baby.”
Critically, the consensus formed fast: Variety called “i like the way you kiss me” one of the “most ubiquitous songs of 2024,” Clash’s Robin Murray heard a song that “bubbles with the coy thrills of attraction,” and The Guardian built its definitive darkwave-revival feature around him. On Reddit his releases run as “fresh” threads in both r/popheads and r/indieheads, a crossover footprint few TikTok-era artists manage, while r/darkwave name-checks him alongside Mareux, Molchat Doma and Ekkstacy as a leading figure of the genre’s streaming-era wave and r/TheWeeknd flagged LOVERCORE as heir to early Abel. A dedicated fan subreddit, r/Artemas, tracks tour news (the Ella Boh and Henry Morris support announcement got its own thread) and has even tried to reach his team through Discord. Reddit’s recommendation engines file him beside Dutch Melrose and Ari Abdul in the “toxic, obsessed alt-pop” canon.
His Spotify monthly-listener figures swing hard with each viral spike, with trackers citing anywhere from roughly 15-16 million to 18.6 million (after a reported 284.3% single-day surge around Coachella 2025) and higher still on some aggregator snapshots, volatility typical of a catalog driven by periodic viral moments rather than steady depth. The constant underneath: over 3.6 billion career streams and counting.
“i like the way you kiss me” is one of the most-certified singles of the TikTok era: over 2 billion Spotify streams, nearly 2.5 billion TikTok views in its first six weeks, #1 chart positions in Austria, Belgium (Flanders), Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland, and top-10 placements across Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, New Zealand and Norway. Key certifications:
| Territory | Certification | Units |
|---|---|---|
| US (RIAA) | 3x Platinum | 3,000,000 |
| UK (BPI) | 2x Platinum | 1,200,000 |
| Germany (BVMI) | 3x Gold | 900,000 |
| Australia (ARIA) | 5x Platinum | 350,000 |
| France (SNEP) | Diamond | 333,333 |
| Poland (ZPAV) | Diamond | 250,000 |
| Canada (Music Canada) | 2x Platinum | 160,000 |
| Mexico (AMPROFON) | Platinum | 140,000 |
| Italy (FIMI) | Platinum | 100,000 |
| Netherlands (NVPI) | Platinum | 93,000 |
| Sweden (GLF) | Platinum | 12,000,000 streams |
| New Zealand (RMNZ) | 2x Platinum | 60,000 |
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1999 | Born Artemas Diamandis, September 23; raised an only child in an Oxfordshire village |
| 2016 | Watches Montage of Heck at 16: “game, set, match”; starts writing songs seriously |
| 2020 | Debut single “High 4 U” (November) |
| 2022 | Self-releases mixtape I’m Sorry I’m Like This (May); meets Toby Daintree around this era |
| 2023 | Scraps the old project with ~100 fans; song-a-month + daily TikToks; “If U Think I’m Pretty” (October 24) goes viral; signs to 10K Projects late in the year |
| 2024 | Pretty (February 9); “i like the way you kiss me” (March 19) hits #1 global Spotify, #12 Hot 100, #3 UK; yustyna (July 11); 33-date You’re Really Early Tour; sold-out O2 Forum Kentish Town (November 11) |
| 2025 | Coachella both weekends (April); Lollapalooza Berlin main stage (July 12); Outside Lands (August); LOVERCORE (October 24) |
| 2026 | 16-date LOVERCORE Tour (February-March); getting up to no good (March 27) with Ella Boh on “BLURRY”; 38-date LOVERCORE / GETTING UP TO NO GOOD world tour announced April 1, closing at O2 Academy Brixton in December |
Artemas Diamandis. The mononym is his actual first name, a Greek biblical name meaning “gift of Artemis.” Name guides suggest “AR-te-mas” or “ar-TEE-mas,” but he has never published a self-pronunciation on record.
Born September 23, 1999, he is 26 as of mid-2026. He was 24 when “i like the way you kiss me” topped global Spotify.
Yes and no. He signed with 10K Projects in late 2023, and yustyna carries the label credit, but “i like the way you kiss me” itself was self-released, as were LOVERCORE and getting up to no good per their release credits. Publishing sits with Sony Music Publishing, management with September Management.
Press files him under darkwave, alternative pop/R&B and synthwave revival; his own formula is “bait lyrics, soaring falsettos and fat bass.” He rejects the label game entirely: “We don’t have scenes; we just have playlists.”
Wikipedia and most coverage place his upbringing in an Oxfordshire village with schooling at Radley College; one outlet describes him as raised in south London, likely a conflation with his later move to the city. Today he splits time between London and Los Angeles studios.
Per his own account to The Guardian, the song was produced in approximately three hours and posted the following day, and producer Toby Daintree’s Music Week interview corroborates the fast February 2024 session, including the Uber-wait mumble intro.
He co-produced and features on Nessa Barrett’s “Mustang Baby,” a darkwave crossover moment between two corners of the dark-pop scene.
The Ring’s wiki maps the scene around him: Ella Boh, his “BLURRY” collaborator and 2026 tour support; Isabel LaRosa, who opened the LOVERCORE run; Nessa Barrett, whose “Mustang Baby” he co-produced; Arden Jones, his 10K Projects labelmate; and the TikTok-era independents whose playbooks rhyme with his, Christian Gates, Dutch Melrose and Ari Abdul. That last overlap is older than any of the numbers above: as far back as March 2021, three years before his breakout, Artemas was already cold-messaging scene peers, Christian Gates among them, comparing notes on TikTok and releases. The student-of-the-game instinct was there long before the game noticed him.
| Year | Title | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | getting up to no good (incl. BLURRY feat. Ella Boh) · more than just a little bit · other lovers · myself · you and i could never be friends | Mixtape · Singles | Club era |
| 2025 | LOVERCORE (Superstar · Vanish · Eat Me Alive · Love Is A Knife · Southbound) · southbound/test drive | Mixtape · Singles | ’80s new-wave era |
| 2024 | yustyna · i like the way you kiss me (US #12, UK #3, RIAA 3x Pt) · dirty little secret · so stunning | Mixtape · Singles | 10K Projects debut; US #147 |
| 2023-24 | Pretty · if u think i’m pretty (RIAA Pt) · ur special to me | Mixtape · Singles | The pivot |
| 2020-22 | High 4 U · I’m Sorry I’m Like This | Single · Mixtape | Bedroom-pop era |