Those were our obsessions last week: ten songs we kept circling back to, playing too loud, and refusing to shut up about.
Rosyfairi
Her name is Liza and she is on a stated mission to make you feel euphoric, which is exactly the energy “TAKE TAKE TAKE” runs on. She built the whole beat out of her own voice, then spent a week working as a PA on an indie horror film, because the glitter-pop fantasy girl has a day job like everybody else. She calls the song limerence, not love, that obsessive ache where you want someone so bad it stops being about them at all. It is sugar-rush dance pop with something a little dangerous humming under it.
LOVELI LORI
She turned a DIY bedroom-pop project into a viral hit with “Love For You,” which racked up more than 200 million streams and 650 million views and put her past three million monthly listeners. “Dramatic” is the follow-up to “Lost My Heart,” and it does what she does best, glossy production with a bratty hook that feels built for the scroll and somehow holds up on repeat. Her debut full-length is coming later this summer. Get loud about her now so you can say you were early.
Marlia Rae
“Name In Lights” takes plain old ambition and makes it sound like a slow burn you want to be near. There is a Tina Turner bite to the way she sings about wanting it, plus a mod-scene swagger that keeps the whole thing cool instead of desperate. It is sultry pop that knows exactly how good it looks. Some people chase the spotlight, she just walks into it like it owes her.
Teanna Bianca
“Double Tap” takes the whole song-and-dance of flirting through a screen and turns it into something warm and grown. There is a dancehall rhythm under it that keeps it loose and tropical, and she sings it with the confidence of a woman who already knows how it ends. It is sultry Tropical R&B for the part of summer where the texting turns into plans. The double tap was never just a double tap and she knows it.
Zolita
“HARDCORE” brings BDSM heat to dark dance pop and sings it like someone who actually knows the kink and the payoff, not someone borrowing the aesthetic for shock value. The whole track makes competence itself the turn-on, the confidence of knowing exactly what you are doing. It is sleek, it is filthy, and it never once flinches. She has been building this lane for years and this is her owning every inch of it.
Cloudy June
“jAGUAR” is a filthy alt-pop ride through teenage crushes, guitar worship, and full grown-woman desire, all tangled up in the same three minutes. She has the catalog to back the swagger, her track “FU In My Head” cleared 55 million streams, and this one struts like she knows it. It is the sound of wanting somebody so bad it loops back around to your teenage bedroom and the rockstar poster on the wall. Crank it and let it be a little embarrassing, that is the point.
Enola Bedard
She built an audience of more than 16 million on TikTok through dance before she ever released her own music, and you can feel that the second “Water” starts moving. The LA-based, Quebec-born artist made a dance-pop song about needing someone the way you need water, about connection and being pulled forward by other people. She slips French phrases into the outro, little “Reflète moi” and “Avec toi” moments that make it feel like hers and nobody else’s. It is the rare summer song that is actually about not crossing the finish line alone.
Maddie Regent
“See me” turns a missed train into a whole cinematic wound, the kind of regret that hits years too late. It is sweet alt-pop about old love and the particular ache of being seen clearly only after the moment to do anything about it has passed. She writes the small specific details that make a breakup feel like a film you keep rewinding. If you have ever realized too slowly that someone was right there, this one is going to find the spot.
Alexia
“Bad Bitch By Design” is sleek, icy, and sexy as hell, with a hook built specifically for your bad-bitch era. It takes revenge and dresses it up in high fashion, cool enough that the person it is aimed at will not even realize they have been buried until later. There is no flailing here, just precision. Put it on when you need to walk into a room like the room should be grateful.
Saylem
Saylem is the megalomaniacal dark-pop alter ego of Orlando singer Jackie Skillet, who also fronts the pop-rock duo Bad Valentine, and the whole project runs like a cinematic universe where every album is its own self-contained story. “ifeelstrange” is about a woman looking at her own breakable heart and deciding it is a liability she cannot afford anymore, then ripping it out to become something that cannot be hurt. Producer TOKI builds it all glossy synth menace with something rotting underneath, and she sings it with a full goddess complex. It is body-horror glamour pulling from Jennifer’s Body and Black Swan, and it is the kind of dangerous you want your dark pop to be.
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