Right now, there’s a lot of pop music that’s been scattered and refracted to hell and back. You know what I’m talking about — vocals fed through 19 layers of Auto-Tune, beats that sound like the vibrating thing inside a PS5 controller. That music is often interesting, but it rarely touches my soul. The Norwegian artist Sassy 009, however, manages to play around in those future-damaged hyper-pop realms while also casting a blissed-out spell. It’s a pretty amazing trick.
Next month, Sassy 009 will release her official debut LP Dreamer+. Look out for that one. It’s good. We’ve already posted the early singles “Butterflies,” “Enemy,” and the Blood Orange collab “Tell Me.” I like all of those songs, and I also like “Mirrors,” Sassy 009’s new collaboration with the fellow electronic explorer and circa-2023 Stereogum Artist To Watch yunè pinku.
“Mirrors” is not a Justin Timberlake cover, and you can tell that when you first look at the video because it’s two minutes and not seven. Instead, it’s a hazily pretty glitch landscape, with Sassy 009 and yunè pinku’s hyper-filtered voices twisting melodies into new shapes over rushing drum-skitters. Check out the Mikaela Kautzky-directed video below.
Dreamer+ is out 1/16 on Heaven-Sent/[PIAS] Électronique.
