PANDORA'S TRENDSETTERS CHART: A "COLD" OPEN

Powered by a potent sync—his “Cold Little Heart” is the opening-credits song on HBO’s Big Little Lies—Interscope troubadour Michael Kiwanuka debuts on Pandora’s latest Trendsetters Chart, a weekly compilation of the 20 acts prompting users to create the highest number of stations; the rundown tracks which up-and-coming artists are trending on the service. Pandora’s Next Big Sound team uses a social and streaming “Taxonomy of Artists” to place artists in one of five categories: Undiscovered, Promising, Established, Mainstream and Epic; appearing in the latter two categories is disqualifying for the Trendsetters chart.

Is this an indicator of bigger things to come for Kiwanuka? Given that some of us have been crushing madly on his two albums, we’d be just fine with that. Stay tuned, and check out the whole chart here.