Thaiboy Digital

Thaiboy Digital is one of the more interesting figures to emerge from the Drain Gang extended universe, and he’s about to release Paradise, a 13-track album due May 10 via his label Bank Of Star Sound System, made in collaboration with Swedish electronic collective swedm. Two singles have already dropped: “Silk Road” and “Euro Dollar Yen,” which together sketch the album’s aesthetic territory quite clearly.

Born Tawan Wattuya in Stockholm to Thai immigrant parents, Thaiboy came up in the same ecosystem as Bladee and Ecco2k, the heavily compressed, woozy, fashion-forward world of cloud rap that has been quietly influential on a much wider range of contemporary music than its underground reputation suggests. He shares a feature credit with Bladee on “Irish Tears,” one of the Paradise tracks, which feels appropriately cyclical for a group that has always seemed to orbit each other’s projects naturally.

What’s distinct about Thaiboy compared to some of his immediate peers is the physicality in his delivery. There’s an assertiveness that cuts through the gauzy production. On the singles, he sounds more focused than spectral, which gives Paradise a different energy than the more deliberately ambient records his collaborators tend to make. The production from swedm leans into club textures, driving bass, and a kind of continental electronic sheen that places the album somewhere between late-night Stockholm and an imagined version of somewhere warmer.

Drain Gang as a collective has maintained a remarkably consistent aesthetic across years of work while subtly evolving each member’s individual voice. Thaiboy’s trajectory has been the most about presence, the sense of someone arriving somewhere, which is fitting for an album called Paradise. The title isn’t ironic, or at least it doesn’t sound ironic. It sounds like a destination.

Paradise arrives May 10, 2026.