Barry Can’t Swim is a new dance music superstar

Scottish producer Barry Can’t Swim is one of the new superstars of dance music, his colourful and woozy grooves winning over packed crowds from Glastonbury to Coachella, and earning Brit Award and Mercury Prize nominations in 2024.

Now, he has started the new year with another accolade – after coming third on the BBC’s Sound of 2025 list.

It confirms him as one of pop’s breakout names, after five years on a steady upward trajectory, gaining more fans, exposure and acclaim with each release.

When Barry Can’t Swim put out his first single in December 2019, it was the latest in a string of projects from Edinburgh-born musician Joshua Mainnie.

He didn’t know this was the one that would take off. If he had, he might have thought a bit harder about the name.

“I’ve just got a mate who’s called Barry and he can’t swim,” he told BBC Radio 6 Music in 2023.

“And when I chose the name, I really wasn’t anticipating it was going to become my full-fledged career and everyone was going to think my name’s Barry.

“There was really no more thought to it than that. And now I’m sort of stuck with it.”

Barry/Joshua has his eagle-eyed, cash-conscious grandfather to thank for setting him on the path to a music career.

“I started playing piano when I was about 10,” he told BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders in an interview revealing his place on the Sound of list.

“My granddad actually saw an advert in a paper for a piano that was going for free, and he picked it up and left it with my mum and dad, and they were like ‘we don’t have space for this’.

“And that was it. I just started learning how to play.”

After catching the music bug, he formed bands in his teens inspired by groups like the Happy Mondays and Stone Roses, who fused indie and dance in the Madchester scene of the late 1980s and early 90s.

Those acts were “some of the first people to really try and create a hybrid of the music that I loved, which was 60s psychedelic rock with more modern electronic music”, he says.

“And that’s exactly what I was trying to do – incorporate the more traditional form of songwriting and melody of 60s music with electronic production.

“That makes it sound a lot better than it was, by the way. But that’s what I was trying to do, at least for a bit.”

Mainnie decided to dedicate himself to dance music after discovering the nightclubs around Edinburgh’s Cowgate as a student, while studying music at Edinburgh Napier University.

“My earliest producing really came from clubbing, really, and going out and just falling in love with dance music that way. So it was a natural progression from bands to electronic music.”

Barry Can’t Swim’s sound is bright, euphoric and highly danceable, with hazy house rhythms, trance pianos and infectious vocal snippets combining in songs that are intoxicating shots of sonic sunshine.

His debut album When Will We Land? includes exotic-sounding samples of Galician folk and Brazilian funk, as well as a recording of his friend Jack Loughrey aka SomeDeadBeat reciting a poem at 4am.

It was one of 12 albums shortlisted for the prestigious Mercury Prize, and Mainnie was nominated for best dance act at the 2024 Brit Awards.

Live, his sound is beefed out by a drummer, second synth player and guest vocalists, while 32-year-old Mainnie dances behind his keyboard in colourful shirts – occasionally emerging to throw shapes at the front of the stage.

He drew a huge crowd to the Park Stage at Glastonbury last summer, sold out three nights at Brixton Academy in November, and will headline a night of the All Points East Festival in east London in August.

He also does DJ sets – but says it “kind of annoys” him when people just refer to him as a DJ.

“I’ve been playing instruments for decades and was producing for five years before I even touched a set of decks,” he told Rolling Stone.

Now, the two sides of his live performance feed off each other, he told Radio 1’s Saunders.

“When I’m DJ-ing a lot, I really miss playing live. And when I’m playing live, I miss DJ-ing.

“Weirdly, it informs what I’ve been writing in the reverse. Like, when I spend a lot of time playing live with the band, I end up writing clubby music because I long for it.

“And then vice versa – when I’m out DJ-ing, I just miss the more live elements of making music.

“So I feel like I have a passion for both equally and mutually, and I think that’s why it’s been so easy to transition from DJ-ing into – not just a band, but the music that I make lends itself well to live performance of electronic music. It still holds the basic principles of traditional songwriting, but with electronic production.”

Barry Can’t Swim is part of a new wave of intelligently feelgood dance music heroes alongside the likes of Sound of 2023 runner-up Fred Again, Sound of 2024 listee Peggy Gou and Sound of 2025 nominees Confidence Man.

Mainnie says “more leftfield” electronic music like his “definitely feels like it’s got a bigger audience than it’s ever had”.

“I don’t really know what’s happened in the past few years, but the music I was listening to, and some of the artists that I was listening to a few years ago when I was going clubbing that were quite niche – now they’re almost pop stars.

“And you’re like, what’s happened? But it’s amazing. It’s such an amazing thing for the scene.”

Almost pop stars?

If Barry/Joshua hasn’t reached that status already, he surely will in 2025.

One act from the BBC Sound of 2025 top five will be announced on Radio 1 and BBC News every day this week, culminating with the winner on Friday.