Singer, songwriter, subversive performance artist, video director, and high priestess of no f**ks given, Poppy is thrilled to announce her forthcoming new album, Zig, set for release on Sumerian Records on October 27th, 2023. Recorded with producer Ali Payami, as well as her long term collaborative partner Simon Wilcox, Zig is at once tender and tough, filled with bold, electronic beats, and deep metal rock riffs reminiscent of early 90s industrial sounds.
The first taste of the album also arrives today in the form of a pulsing, sinewy song called “Knockoff.” A video for the track – filled with tarot card imagery, Suspiria-esque choreography, and more – was directed by Le3ay, and is yet another arresting visual from an artist known for displacing norms and redefining dark pop on her own terms.
The mononymous Poppy is a unique, multi-hyphenate creation. Originating from a dance background, Poppy’s first steps in the creative world began with performance art video vignettes. The importance of these videos took prominence over the music she made to accompany them, but eventually, as the intimacy of the songs became too strong to let anyone else touch them, she progressed into singing, screaming, songwriter, and more, finding an outlet that would allow her to pull apart her journals, dig deep visually, and experiment sonically to create something entirely new.
After initially signing to LA’s Sumerian Records, she released her album, 2020’s I Disagree, to much acclaim. Disregarding both convention, labels and genres, it tallied over 100 million streams, and the song “BLOODMONEY” earned a GRAMMY nomination for Best Metal Performance, the first ever solo female artist nominated in the category.
Finding inspiration from music that has resonated with her since a child – Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Blondie, Gary Numan, and Bowie – as well as current artists, like semi-anonymous electro-pioneer Burial and English DJ Blawan – Poppy’s new album Zig was born. Creating the album – on which Poppy also plays guitar and bass – was a tight process representative of a singular chapter. It was throughout that chapter that Poppy – who has been putting out boundary-pushing music for over a decade – went deeper into herself than she ever has before. The album sees her working through relationship beginnings and endings, the stop/start of the pandemic, the toss and turn of the music industry, and more, all the while further defining who she truly is as an artist.
The result is an album that puts together all of the parts of who Poppy has been since her early output in crystal clear clarity: the rawness of her scream; the midnight-dark pop sheen of her production, reminiscent of artists like TR/ST, Bloodpop, and Glass Candy; the intensity of her experience of selfhood, endlessly exploring and playing with ideas of gender, her presence online, and more. Zig is a reflection of an artist who has been in the public eye since her late teens coming into her own in her late 20’s as a woman who knows what she wants and who she is.
Pairing immersive, roiling electronics with candy-coated vocals, songs on Zig bubble just under the skin. At times, the music’s cool lacquer gives way to Poppy’s own lacerating screamed lyrics, the perfect complement to dislodging the songs’ pointed pop edges.
