Erika De Casier Still

Copenhagen’s Erika de Casier developed her whispered purr to avoid disturbing her flatmates while learning to produce in her bedroom. But her hush also channels Aaliyah, whose less-is-more cool de Casier studied on MTV as a kid in Denmark, escaping into the vibey neo-soul and bleeding-edge R&B of the ’90s and 2000s. With 2019’s Essentials and 2021’s Sensational, de Casier proved herself a dazzling new voice in R&B and electronic music, forging her own lane on the over-crowded highway of Y2K revivalism with songs like “Polite”: lush, sexy and playful, with idiosyncratic one-liners that stuck in your craw. (“I took you on a date in a restaurant/Then you’re rude to the waiter/Like, what is up?”) On her third album, de Casier drifts towards clarity through the haze of heartbreak, slipping between sultriness and sadness, reverie and real life. “Lucky” embodies the best of early-aughts pop sweetness with its gentle 2-step shuffle, and on the elegant crush anthem “Test It”, she splits her time between fantasy and reality: “Nine to five, I’m at yours at six/Work, you, sleep and repeat, that’s it.” For the first time, de Casier welcomes outside voices into the mix, recruiting dance-floor singer Shygirl on the bratty “Ex-Girlfriend” and Tampa rap duo They Hate Change for “ice”, a pitch-perfect time capsule of late-’90s scorn. The veil of romance lifts, and drudgery creeps in: On “My Day Off”, she sighs, the laundry’s not going to do itself. But even outside the bubble of love, the world of Still is alive with understated magic, as dreams bleed into reality and the natural landscape crackles with sensuality: On “Home Alone”, she murmurs, “I’m coming up for air from beneath the sea/And when I reach the sky, will you come with me?”