Add to playlist: The wild pop of Zara Larsson co-writer Helena Zhao and the best new songs of the week | music

from Aarhus, Denmark
Recommended if you like Caroline Polaszek, Zara Larsson, Grimes
the next The first project is coming later this year

You can’t get a better start to professional songwriting than co-writing nine-tenths of a critical album — namely Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun — and then getting a Grammy nod for it. It is an enviable starting point for relaunching Helena Zhao’s solo career. Over the past few years, the Chinese-Danish artist has released a number of singles and EPs — her standout “God’s Favorite” splits the difference between NewJeans and R&B, and comes with an excellent video referencing Sims — but her new music feels like a real boom, sidelining her old sweetness for an exotic braid of bass-heavy, trippy trance, and pitch-bent falsetto to rival Caroline Polachek, who sings in both English and Mandarin.

You can trace its development in the tracks released just a few years later. When Zhao released “Pretty Please” in 2023, the shimmering new-age lyric was full of innuendo: “I’m a little wise,” she said, aware of her parents hearing her words. But the first taste of her new era, Lao Xi (老师), translates to “teacher”; Her iridescent tones bloom like flowers as she contemplates “new positions” and “improved pleasure.” It’s more innocent than it seems, she says, and was written “during a period of personal awakening” that reflects her “reconnection with my Chinese identity.”

Born in Aarhus to a Chinese mother and Danish father, Gao moved to Copenhagen, learned classical jazz and – elsewhere – studied at the Percussion Music Conservatory that produces all the border-breaking Danish pop stars, before moving to split her time between London and Shanghai, immersing herself in the club scenes in both cities. All of this is echoed by an officially wild upcoming project that should really make Gao’s name. Laura Snaps

The best new songs of the week

Saul Williams – The Conspiracy (with Moor Mother and Gonjasufi)
“You can choose to want to belong…” A rousing return to the great poet, dispensing empowering wisdom as if to a group of new revolutionaries, over an amapiano beat. BPT

Lily Seabird – Election Day
According to Ultimatums, “Love me or leave me alone” is a pretty good one — especially when the songwriter is screaming over blaring alternative country guitar, preparing to blast off into the year 2026. L.S

Yushh – petty revenge
With a bass built to roam through the body of a heavily reinforced hatchback, the West Country dance producer is assembling a mighty secret weapon for festival season. BPT

case/lang/verse – accidental tattoo
Marking the decade of Neko Case, kd lang and Laura Veirs have joined forces for one album, this gorgeous bonus track from those sessions is beyond heaven. Come on ladies, give us volume two. L.S

Femiguerrero – Skywalker (with Fakemink)
Taken from Fimiguerrero’s haunting, emo-leaning new EP The Statue of a Fool, he reaches out to another underground UK rap star to complain about a clingy girlfriend over Wraith9’s dissonant beat. BPT

Jordan Patterson – Cinderella
The Los Angeles songwriter’s music just gets weirder in the best way possible: her vocal vibrato builds an impasto-like texture, summoning jagged, resonant piano and shimmering synths for her shimmering vocal imagination. L.S

Tierra whack – wax wax
Sitting amid the groovy, soul-sampling hip-hop on his new mixtape Whack’s Museum, Whack uses a tight, repetitive vocal melody to evoke a downbeat yet stubborn mood: fine craft. BPT

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