Apple Music today announced masked country crooner Orville Peck will kick off the new year as the latest Up Next artist to join Apple Music’s monthly artist initiative geared towards identifying, showcasing and elevating rising talent. Peck embodies the program’s rising star status as a modern alt-country artist for the Instagram age, a burgeoning fashion and cultural icon who is breaking boundaries in the country music tradition.

Apple Music has fully supported the masked indie artist following the release of his critically acclaimed 2019 debut album, Pony. Since then, Peck has been celebrated as a guitar artist crossing genre bounds and showcased across Apple Music’s Pure Country Radio, Today’s Country, Indie Radio, Untitled, Up Next, Country Wide, Eclectic Rock, as well as Zane Lowe and Matt Wilkinson’s Beats 1 anchor shows.

“I’m thrilled to have been chosen as Apple’s newest Up Next artist,” said Peck. “They have been so supportive of me and it feels real nice to be able to bring y’all a little closer to who I am as a country musician and an artist.”

“Orville Peck is an enigma alright: a glorious mix of differing qualities that, on paper, really shouldn’t work,” said Apple Music host Matt Wilkinson. “Yet when you listen to his music, and hear his story, and watch how he connects with people on stages all over the world, there can be no denying that he’s hit upon something very special indeed. At his London show last October I saw stetson-wearing country old-timers stood shoulder-to-shoulder with drag queens, hipsters, indie kids, members of the fashion elite and sweet couples out on date night - all completely connected thanks to the music of one man who says he’s spent his entire life feeling disconnected. The irony of that!”

Peck’s Up Next short shot on iPhone 11 comes to Apple Music exclusively today and is available to watch HERE. In the film, Peck speaks to his trademark fringed mask, and tells Apple Music, “The point is combining ultra-sincerity with a heightened version of who you are at your core.”

On January 29th, Peck will perform on Jimmy Kimmel Live! as part of Apple Music’s Up Next program.

The latest music from Orville Peck, along with that of his Up Next peers, is available now on the Apple Music Up Next Playlist.