Browsing Tag

electronic pop

Wavy Tranquillity and Cinematic Vocals Carry ‘Only You’ by Srujanika Beyond Pop Convention

Posted on 11 June 2026
Srujanika

Srujanika’s standout single, Only You, breezed onto the airwaves as a salve for the senses. The atmospherically emotive earworm is lush with the reverb of an 80s pop ballad and just as sultry as a 90s alt-indie-pop smoking gun of a single, polished off with the kind of wavy tranquillity that strips the weight right off your soul. It is a hit that leaves all the right marks, stretching itself across six minutes of slow-blooming intimacy with the confidence of an artist fully aware of the world she is building.

Her creative command is so clear that it shimmers through the extended single. Refusing to fall in line with past and present trends, Srujanika uses her vocals to drive the single forward, the trip-hop and leftfield-electronica-adjacent instrumentals following behind, swaying in the breeze of temperate soul, intimate lyricism and oceanic passion.

There is a rare kind of patience in Only You, the kind that lets desire breathe until it starts to feel elemental. The production glides, allowing her voice to hold the centre as synth-washed textures, shadowed percussion and glacial romanticism gather around it. Srujanika gives the track its emotional weather, pulling 80s gloss, 90s alt-pop smoke and future-facing electronic soul into a release that feels weightlessly immersive.

Stream Only You here.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Rose Pedal’s How Did I End Up Here? Turns Indie Pop Uncertainty into a Sci-Fi Western Fever Dream

Posted on 6 June 2026

How Did I End Up Here? A question we have all undoubtedly asked ourselves countless times before. Rose Pedal pose it into a spacey, adrift atmosphere on their latest single, tinged with psychedelically cosmic experimentalism, uniting us through collective bafflement while tearing through the myth that everyone around us has life figured out.

After a Tarantino-esque intro that would make any Texan spaceman feel right at home, How Did I End Up Here? nestles into an atmosphere that enmeshes sci-fi sonic insignia with tenderly consoling reverberations. Echoes of The National drift through the emotional architecture before the track takes an interstellar turn and broadsides with a fiery spoken-word rap verse.

The Ohio-born indie pop trio, made up of a producer, a singer and a rapper, live at the intersection of organic and digital, where acoustic hues of intimacy bleed warmth into layers of electronica. Their sound carries the synth-pop gloss of Miike Snow and the grungy, lyrically driven oddness of Gorillaz, yet Rose Pedal remain entirely their own strange organism.

Rose Pedal is exactly the kind of artist capable of pushing experimentalism into the mainstream. The commercial potential of this seminal single belies its refusal to contort authenticity into archetypal aural monotony. Even outside of the orbit of most contemporary indie artists, they’re effortlessly accessible, endlessly charismatic and infinitely playlistable.

How Did I End Up Here? is now available to stream on all major platforms, including YouTube and Apple Music.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

When Xander Corbett Tuned the Night Sky into Signal Lost, an Interview

Posted on 2 May 2026

Xander Corbett has broken his hiatus with a project that feels like a late-night broadcast sent from somewhere just beyond the atmosphere, and in this interview, he unpacks the inner world behind it. SIGNAL LOST pulls from a decade of shaping his sound, reaching back to teenage files while stepping into a new phase of self-knowledge. He reflects on using PROOF FM as a dreamy framing device, the strange comfort of transmissions, and the hazy headspace that shaped the album’s static-soaked mood. We also explore why performing new material live before the announcement feels like its own kind of thrill, how older songs found a second life, and what he hopes listeners finally catch about the man behind the synth pop haze.

You’ve teased that SIGNAL LOST plays out like a late night confessional transmitted through PROOF FM. When did the idea of framing the whole album as a radio show first spark for you, and what feeling were you chasing with that format?

Honestly, the original album title I penned when I first started this project about two years ago was ‘PROOF OF THE AFFAIR’, and as much as I liked the title, I felt as though I’d outgrown it. That’s where PROOF FM comes in. I wanted a subtle nod to what used fo be my intention with the record, but in a way that feels nostalgic and whimsical. This whole record has been set with the intention of giving listeners an escape from the chaos of the world around us. Take you into an alternate dimension, perhaps space, for a forty-six-minute journey.

You have said this record marks ten years of shaping your sound. When you reached back to those early projects you made at thirteen and sixteen, what surprised you most about the younger version of yourself hiding in those files?

I have a habit of judging my younger self. I started looking back at these older projects and thinking more critically and in depth as to what was I trying to make happen here and there and what I would do today with the more refined skill set that I have to make it happen.

There is something incredibly raw about building an album around transmissions. What does the phrase signal lost mean to you right now on a personal level, especially as you step into a new era of your career?

Signal lost itself kind of represents how I was feeling while making the record. To me, when I hear the phrase, I envision a radio floating in the ether. Just kind of there. I was so engulfed in the chaos around me, my brain felt like static at all times, and this record was my reprieve from it all.

You are holding off on announcing the album until your April show. What does performing new material live before anyone knows an album is on the horizon do for your confidence and the overall energy of the rollout?

To be fully honest, I just love to see the crowd reaction. I announced my previous record, ‘The Red Album,’ at a show in 2024 before I fully started my set, and the crowd went wild. I also just want to give them a more stripped-down sneak peek of some of the music, the acoustic versions they started as in my bedroom.

Synth pop comes with so much history and nostalgia. When you approached this record, what textures or moods shaped the late-night atmosphere you wanted listeners to feel from the first few seconds?

The intro to the record starts with flipping through channels and static on a radio. I wanted the journey to truly begin with an ease into another dimension, and I feel that the way I structured it really does well at bringing you into that with me before we kick off the first proper song.

Looking back across a decade of making music, what kept you going through the awkward years, the breakthroughs, and the inevitable moments where progress felt slow?

Truly just my love for songwriting. It became such an ingrained part of my everyday life that I had no brakes to apply to the train.

You are bringing a track from your first full album back into the spotlight. What made you decide it deserved a second life on SIGNAL LOST, and how did revisiting it change your relationship with it?

On my previous record, I’d revamped a song from the same album to make it more lively. I went into this album thinking “there has to be a section dedicated to the tender love I find myself occasionally writing about” and that song had always been a fan favorite as well as a personal favorite, so it kind of felt like an obvious choice to me.

When fans finally hear the full project on 15 May, what do you hope they understand about you that they might not have pieced together from your previous releases?

That I am a man of multitudes. And I like to get scrappy from time to time.

–

Stream Xander Corbett’s discography on Spotify & connect with the artist via Instagram.

Interview by Amelia Vandergast

Get Caught in the 2010s Indie Afterglow with the Ethereal Oscillations in LORI USAI’s Masterstroke of Melancholia, ‘Wet Denim’

Posted on 24 April 2026

With more style than a cover of Vogue and as a haunting indie callback to that 2010s sweet spot when Warpaint, Poliça, Wolf Alice, Lorde, and London Grammar sat deep in the cultural bloodstream, LORI USAI’s standout single, Wet Denim, hypnotises you into its ethereal oscillations of melancholia. There’s a lived-in emotional intelligence to the way she handles atmosphere, making the track feel less like a throwback and more like a continuation of everything that made that era hit so hard in the first place. Her writing circles what remains when self-deception falls away, when longing, loneliness and obsession are left exposed without anything neat to hide behind.

Even when playing with elements of discordance, the release stays committed to catharsis, keeping the production euphorically lush through its torrid spells of riled-up feeling. The luminous synths and quasi-cosmic indie pop aesthetics temper the romanticism of LORI USAI, who feels fully attuned to the torture of letting emotions run deeper than surface level. There’s heartbreak, but also shame, hope, anger, and that strange state of breaking apart while still feeling feverishly alive.

Wet Denim is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

‘Summertime’ by Walter Hansen Lives Where Lust for Life Meets Oceanic Longing

Posted on 13 April 2026

Walter Hansen’s latest single, Summertime, is for everyone who has felt nostalgia for a perfect moment as it was still unravelling. Sonically visualising the scintillation of sun-kissed serendipity, Hansen’s experimental EDM pop hit pulls in motifs from across the globe; there’s everything from tropic pop heat to afrobeat rhythmics to Arabian snaking hooks, and at the centre of it all is his cultivation as a classic pop crooner. Recorded in his own studio after first taking shape in Sarasota near the beach, before later being completed in the Pacific Northwest, the single carries the feeling of a memory that refused to fade until it found the right form.

That lingering sense of emotional suspension and the chilled haze of the melodies allow Summertime to establish itself as immersive conduit of catharsis, somewhere you can always return to, knowing you’re in deft hands, where life itself is almost allowed to take on more fundamental meaning.

It’s impossible to tie the track to any one epoch; its timelessness works in beautiful tension with the thematic core of the release, placing you on the edge of an oceanic panorama as you’re reminded what it means for lust for life to converge with love for another. It’s a lush release that deserves to land right on your playlists.

Summertime is now available on all major streaming platforms, including SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

 Possibly Jamie Turned Performance Addiction Into the Bass-Swathed Hyper-Pop Earworm ‘2000000Time’

Posted on 3 April 2026

Glasgow-based queer pop artist Possibly Jamie channelled every atom of his self-aware eccentricity into a full-throttle pop spectacle in 2000000Time. The moniker, borrowed from a 1995 Björk track, belongs to Jamie Rees, a classically trained musician who taught himself production and has spent the last few years shaping one of the more idiosyncratic voices in Scottish electronic pop. In this latest release, that theatrical impulse collides with hyper-pop intensity, resulting in a track that thrives on dramatic momentum and irreverent wit.

2000000Time is the beautifully bizarre consequence of a self-confessed theatre kid pouring his personality into a frenetically supersonic whirlwind of sound. Bass-swathed kinetic beats ricochet through the arrangement, sending the rhythm into delicious disarray until the choruses erupt into scintillation. There, the iconic lyric lands with full dramatic flair: “I’d never leave you for another man, but I’d leave you for a feeling, better gazing at an angry crowd than gazing at the ceiling.” The line captures the song’s core tension while doubling as a hook built for repeat listens. Wrapped in gleaming 80s synth-pop motifs, the track delivers an earworm that marries cerebral lyricism with the adrenaline rush of a dance-pop fix.

The narrative centres on a relationship with performance itself. The spotlight becomes the real partner, while the human connection quietly fractures in the wings. Each show operates as another emotional affair with the audience, transforming devotion to performance into a sly meditation on attachment and repetition. Possibly Jamie leans into the theatrical absurdity of it all, even slipping in a bleeped apology to Pedro Pascal during the closing moments, a wink that confirms the hit thrives on self-aware humour.

2000000Time is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

 

Childhood Tramua Charged the Debut Single, ‘I won’t talk back’ by the Alt-Pop Icon in the Making, riyuli

Posted on 31 March 2026

Riyuli lit a fire under art pop with her debut single, I won’t talk back. The piano-led prelude teases a classical piano pop ballad, but riyuli uses her chameleonic talents to shift pace seamlessly, bringing crunched guitar chords into the haunting candour of the release.

On the surface, it may register as heartbroken scorn in the wake of a breakup, but I won’t talk back tears into a far more visceral wound, the attempt to find your feet independently after growing up under the tyranny of controlling parents, following the degradation of relentless character assassinations that cut so close to the bone they become part of us. Musing on how it may have been better if she had never been born is a brutal lyrical line, and one that will hit hard for anyone who has ever felt like a burden inside the familial bond. The synthesis of classical pop, electronica, rock, and the vulnerability on show makes I won’t talk back a release that will either break or heal your heart.

Toronto-based riyuli, a self-taught singer with a background in classical piano and performance, already has early radio support behind her, but this track speaks loudest on its own terms, raw, bruised, and dead certain of what it needs to say.

I won’t talk back is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Loni Lincoln Turned Years of Creative Evolution into a Cross-Cultural EDM Earworm with ‘Asian Girl’

Posted on 13 March 2026
There’s little in life that maturity can’t better; cheese, wine, whiskey, and Loni Lincoln’s latest single, Asian Girl. The track has simmered and evolved over the years before landing in its final form, and that slow burn paid off. Created in collaboration with Desmond Lawrence, the two firebrands became an unreckonable force in a cross-cultural hybridic cut where traditional Eastern instrumentalism coils around kinetic EDM beats.

Lincoln’s vocal performance carries a palpable sense of cultural duality. Her delivery holds reverence for heritage while charging forward with contemporary pop urgency. When Lawrence heightens the track with his Dancehall-inspired bars, the song opens into a wider emotional frame, adding swagger and rhythmic electricity to the sonic architecture. In that moment, Asian Girl transforms from a culturally rooted concept into something far bigger.

The single lands as a vulnerability-fuelled earworm which tints its euphoric sonic rushes with the torment of knowing geography can quietly dictate how others choose to typecast you. That emotional tension sits beneath the shimmering production, allowing the track to balance empowerment with lived truth.

Lincoln’s story feeds directly into that perspective. Raised in Essex with a Chinese Malaysian mother and London-born father, her family lineage stretches across continents shaped by migration, resilience, and reinvention. Performing since childhood and sharing stages with artists including UB40, Lincoln carries that history into her songwriting with fearless honesty.

With production from Mario Eddie and Charlie King, Asian Girl lands as a cross-cultural pop statement powered by identity, heritage, and unapologetic self-definition.

Asian Girl is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Sofia Kafas Delivered Disco Ball Shimmer and Sticky-Sweet Romanticism Wrapped in Disco-Drenched Retro-Futurist Pop in ‘Let You Down’

Posted on 14 February 2026
Sofia Kafas

Sofia Kafas drenched Let You Down in disco ball shimmer that scatters across her future-leaning pop sound with a warm, neon-soft glow. The London-based singer, pianist and producer always carries an emotional charge. This time, she could have lit up the national grid as she threaded nostalgic pop touches into the track without dulling its modernistic dose of high-polish kinetic adrenaline.

The 80s-inspired vocal FX fold her voice into the instrumental mix with a strangely natural ease, still allowing her harmonies to move with a light, almost seemingly infinite reach that calls back to the breezier side of 90s pop singer-songwriters. There’s no risk of the sweetness tipping into a full-on guilty pleasure of a sugar rush. She lets the romantic vulnerability breathe, giving you enough space to sink into the drifting escapism that unravels through the production. The whole track feels like a quiet portal out of the real world for a moment, shaping itself around that soft pull between longing and satisfaction.

Beyond her contributions to the airwaves, Kafas has been steadily building her name through London’s live scene, performing everywhere from Bush Hall to the Elgar Room at the Royal Albert Hall, Her background in production, sound engineering and classical piano all lend themselves to a sonic signature that creates the ultimate equilibrium between sleek, sincre and infectiously addictive.

Let You Down is now available on all major streaming platforms. Find your preferred way to listen via the artist’s official website. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Yash Kapoor flooded retro‑futurist RnB pop with hyper 8‑bit intimacy in ‘Secrets In Your Eyes’

Posted on 5 January 2026

The retro-futurist sonic architect, Yash Kapoor, blazed beyond the RnB synth pop artists on cruise control as they meander through neon hues and bruises with his latest single, Secrets In Your Eyes, which injects a rush of hyper 8-bit euphoria into new wave synth lines.

There’s a ferocity to the euphonic rhythm section that takes a piece of Kapoor’s impassioned soul and kicks a cadence of visceralism into it as synaesthesia-inducing synths and phasers oscillate around the dreamy distortion-laden vocals, which dig deeper than lust, capturing an intimacy that’s enough to give you your own cosmic fix of oxytocin.

Accompanied by a visualiser, which enables the middle-eight reach a climax of experimental cinematography as the synth lines are stripped right back to expose a frenetic heartbeat, and the video captures Kapoor as he glitches through derealisation before the melody swings back into full force for the outro, it’s clear that Kapoor is intent on breaking through the alt RnB kaleidoscope with unparalleled authenticity.

As a Los Angeles-based producer, composer, and multidisciplinary artist, Kapoor doesn’t just bring a sound—he brings a world. Shaped by time in studios with major players like DaHeala and forged through his own cinematic instincts, Kapoor’s approach is one of precision and vulnerability. His solo material pulls you into that tension, where emotional exposure meets the full force of electronic depth.

Secrets In Your Eyes is now available on all major streaming platforms via this link. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast