doom-emacs-config VS themes

Maybe take a look at my (messy) config, because I've got it set up exactly like how you describe https://github.com/ThomasFKJorna/doom-emacs-config (I'm using Doom though)

There's more customization for the indentation and getting rid of the stars etc, you can see that in my config: https://github.com/ThomasFKJorna/doom-emacs-config

According to the maintainer of that, as you can see in the Q&A section on that page, they use a theme called "Varia" from WordPress's github as their starting point: https://github.com/Automattic/themes/tree/trunk/varia

While I endorse any minimalistic block based approach, I don't think blockbase is nothing more than a bare bones as well. What bugged me the most in _s also bugs me in Blockbase - it has "too little of everyhing", it's less than minimum. It's better than "too much of everything" (which is the biggest issue with most of the WP themes out there) but it doesn't help. Also, in my personal opinion stey they still lack in SCSS quality-wise. While there's not a lots of code it's still too messy and complicated for my preferences. As a full on CSS guy with the most minimal approach I appreciate functional, fast yet working style sheet. You can see what I mean when you compare the button block in blockbase (here) and in Air-light (here).

If you want to tinker with the new stuff then check out Blockbase. It's basically the FSE centric replacement for the old underscores theme. Setup a local WP environment (e.g. DevKinsta or localwp) and clone the GH theme folder into your project.