Foot Fetishist

There’s this moment in Earthquake where the synth comes in and you know you’re going to be listening to this album on repeat. Little Boots’ debut Hands is tearing through the UK right now, about to hit Germany, and it’s one of the best things I’ve heard in years. Her single New In Town has been everywhere for weeks, but the album is where the real depth is.

She sits somewhere between Ladyhawke, Annie, and La Roux—that bright, synthed-out electro-pop moment that shouldn’t work as well as it does. There are patches where it veers into pretty straightforward pop that loses me a little, but the overall feeling is one of relief. Someone finally made this kind of music feel fun again, feel lighter than air without being weightless, and it turns out that’s exactly what I needed to hear.

Part of why this lands so hard is that electro-pop has been a mess for a while. Swallowed by worse impulses, stretched too thin, turned into something that felt effortful and desperate. Victoria Hesketh just ignores all that and makes the album she wants to make—clever and pop and unafraid of being pretty—and suddenly the whole genre feels new again.

Remedy hits just as hard as Earthquake, but there’s a hidden track called Hands that shows something darker and more uncertain, and it reframes everything that came before. She clearly knows what she’s doing in ways that matter—not just hitting the technical beats but understanding what a pop song can actually hold if you don’t oversell it.

She has that thing where you can tell she’s going to matter without needing anyone to tell you that. Just the confidence in how she moves through these songs, the way nothing sounds like an accident. The kind of artist you become completely insufferable about—not because a magazine told you to, but because you heard three minutes and suddenly you can’t stop.