It seems that, for alternative music fans, we've been living in a maximalist era. Just look at some of the most celebrated releases this year, which blur genres and mix up some chaotic and glitched sounds: leroy's (aka Jane Remover) Status Update, Slayyyter's Wor$t Girl in America, Angine de Poitrine's Vol. II, By Storm's My Ghost Go Ghost and underscores' U, just to name a few.

Of course that's nothing new – especially since PC Music's hyperpop took over the internet and dominated the discourse around alternative pop music. But, this weekend in São Paulo, C6 Fest showcased a handful of artists who seem to believe that less is more.

This is C6's fourth edition in São Paulo, and since launching in 2023, the festival has continued to bring fresh faces to Brazil. Artists like Black Country, New Road, Dry Cleaning, Young Fathers, Squid and Arooj Aftab made their Brazilian debut at the festival over the years. This year, they had newbies like Oklou, Cameron Winter and Magdalena Bay.

But newcomers alone don't define C6. In fact, the festival came to be known as an ideal place for older millennial audiences, something reflected in its headliners: on Saturday, The xx played tunes spanning their almost 20-year-old career; on Sunday, none other than Robert Plant played his and Led Zeppelin's hits. 

To be fair, Plant's show was not at all minimalistic. There were about a dozen musicians onstage, taking turns in playing various string instruments. You can say, though, it was softer: the songs were mainly acoustic, and even rocking tracks like Led Zeppelin II's "Ramble On" shed its guitar solos in favor of a more subdued version. 

The xx's show was quite the opposite. For 90-minutes, Jamie, Oliver and Romy played their well-known hits on electric guitars, bass and, of course, Jamie's sound effects and samples. But the result was much more muted than Plant's acoustic extravaganza, as the band makes use of the negative space between their sparse guitar licks and bass rhythms. At C6's outdoor stage, where the sound was not that loud, it was possible to hear people talking during the concert. 

The xx, at least as a group, have been out of the picture for a while – their most recent album is 2017's I See You. But it seems like their minimalistic aesthetic has had quite a long-lasting influence on more recent indie acts. An example is the delicate sound of trio Horsegirl, who played early on Saturday to a few people who dared to get to Parque Ibirapuera under a forming rainstorm. 

Lykke Li, on Sunday, sang over softened electronic basses – her rendition of Caetano Veloso's "Sozinho" was one of the best moments of the weekend. Cameron Winter's set, with only voice and piano in Ibirapuera's auditorium, was also discreetly powerful. 

But the best show out of the festival's dozens, the one artist who did the most out of her 60-minute set, was French singer Oklou. It's funny how people usually put her in the same category as hyperpop maximalists like underscores and Charli XCX. Yes, it's all alternative pop, but I feel like Oklou's music's strongest aspect is its softness. 

She showcased this with grace on C6, making even the subtly trance tunes "Harvest Sky" and "Choke Enough" sound like dancefloor bangers. In the quieter moments, we could see Oklou (joined by collaborator Casey MQ and one other musician) taking turns on various instruments: sometimes she would play a neon-lit recorder, others an acoustic guitar. 

Maybe the C6 festival is signaling a new era has come into place for alternative music. In a land of AI slop and information overload, maybe we could be heading down a path of more subtle music – something quieter, more spacious, that clears the mind instead of overwhelming it.