Listen: Prizes by Narium

Opening with something akin to a speed garage rhythm played by a hardcore rock band, Prizes sits with a gritty little dark heart, the centre of attention on a tear-streaked dance floor.

Taking her inspiration from 2010s indie and alt pop, from M83, the 1975, Daughter and Lorde, Narium’s sound is a romanticised take on the mid-digital era of Tumblr. Berlin based, Narium’s sound is deliberately edgy-yet-playful, pulsing bass and electric guitars contrasting with the vulnerability of her vocals.

What Prizes achieves is an aesthetic that accentuates the dramatic, coming of age style it is shooting for. The grimy bass and drums propel a song that resonates with the energy of animated gifs, subtweets, heartbreak, and a veil of aloof shame once it is all done.

Prizes is the second single to be lifted from Narium’s forthcoming debut album, following on from the crisp and dark song Nosebleed.

In addition to listening in the post, you can find almost all the music BlackPlastic covers on the music player of your choice. Add the dedicated playlist below:

Apple Music Spotify

Listen: Put the Fries in the Bag by Nesya

Born in Nebraska and raised the daughter of a preacher, Nesya’s youth was spent hiding her sense of self — an embrace of the gothic — whilst surviving sexual abuse, infidelity, and social isolation. A move to Sacramento at the age of 12 saw her find the alternative and darkwave scenes that felt like they reflected something she felt inside.

Having garnered attention via TikTok, her single Delulu was a breakthrough moment that arrived against the backdrop of the breakdown of Nesya’s abusive marriage and a split for her label. Now with the new label Double Down, formed by Evan Lipschutz in partnership with Virgin Music, Nesya is gearing up for a forthcoming album.

Put the Fries in the Bag is the lead single from that album, and it charts a path through a mixture of dark pop and EBM. Shimmering black synths provide a glossy background for Nesya’s vocals, as hollow bass tones create a robotic-yet-organic aesthetic. Produced by Kill Dave, the song is a deliberate attempt to recast trauma as absurdity:

‘I wrote it in the middle of a messy divorce and betrayal. The song turned that chaos into something fun. It’s proof that the 'dumbest' idea can be the thing that makes you want to dance again—or just eat some fries.’

Deadpan vocals create an acerbic, cutting narrative, as Nesya claims her place as a black alternative artist operating at the rare intersection of post-punk stylings combined with house and R&B sensibilities. The result is bold and infectious.

Watch: Button by Hockitay

On hitting the play button on Button, the latest release from Hockitay, I found myself really back in the headspace I occupied when I first heard Clairo’s beautiful, heartbreaking song Bags. Claire Cottrill has since gone on to become the kind of artist they would sell in a supermarket if people still bought music. Which isn’t to necessarily create a similar pressure on Hockitay.

All of which is to say, Hockitay’s new single occupies a certain loose and hungover space. Guitars are strummed, but only gingerly, baggy drums kick more or less to time, and Hockitay’s layered vocal feels compressed, two plates of glass smearing his emotions into a microscope slide for your inspection.

I have a playlist for this sort of music, called Loose and Losing, full of this kind of beautiful emotional freewheeling. It’s the sort of thing I would listen to on the way to a self-help group for people who feel things too much. Which, for the record, is me.

Born in Guatemala, Hockitay is now based in Montreal. Button concerned with our age of AI, where the sense self feels under threat, sees Hockitay observing, and asking us, ‘The task of living is all consuming, don’t you find that I’ve consumed enough?’

Listen: Suki by Desperately Seeking Suki

Opening with spectral synths, warm chords and an intimate vocal, the debut single from Desperately Seeking Suki wears its heart proudly on its sleeve.

Desperately Seeking Suki are sibling duo Natassa Zoë and Danny Pugh, who also goes by the pseudonym SIG SALI. Whilst Danny is based in Bristol, Natassa divides her time between Australia and the UK. The pair started making music together remotely, sending their work back and forth around the globe, before reuniting to launch their debut EP.

With influences that include Wolf Alice, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Arcade fire, Desperately Seeking Suki have created a sound that has a distinct emotional urgency. Natassa’s spoken word performance in the verse betrays a sense of feeling deeper that the deadpan delivery might suggest, before removing the gloves in a chorus that is immediate and insistent. In that moment, she declares an unconditional love for Suki, who gets billing here as the song’s title, but also a permanent fixture within the band name.

Whether Suki is a real person or not is left to the listener to decide, but the duo confirm that they represent the experience of meeting someone who truly sees you, and enables you to be yourself. As Natassa describes, ‘Suki is about embracing the light and dark in yourself and finding love that holds through the chaos.’

It’s a promising and exciting debut, and I’m looking forward to hearing more. Check out Suki below, and add to your streaming service of choice here:

Listen: Enchanted by Sebastian Fluent

Enchanted is the latest release from Hamburg-based artist Sebastian Fluent.

With a crackly aesthetic derived from the sound of aging vinyl, Fluent’s track combines a retro-aesthetic with buoyant synths and damaged-sounding vocals. The result captures a sense of deep longing — the kind of attraction that borders on painful.

As a musician, Sebastian derives his sound from a combination of house, hip-hop, and soul, ‘with occasional sprinkles of slackerish indie rock.’ With an aim to make music that is a ‘mixture of polished and dirty’, his sound is textural and yet refined.

Enchanted is lifted from Fluent’s latest LP, On, which was released last year. The aforementioned vinyl crackle is captured from the run out groove of a record that was playing in his studio as he was cleaning up. Riffing off the natural rhythm the record produced, Sebastian recorded the sound there and then, triggering a further round of inspiration that manifested in the final track.

The final piece is a spellbinding creation. Chunky bass and melodic refrains are blended with insistent guitar melodies, creating a simple yet seductive piece of garage-influenced soul. Check it out below, and find links to the album here.