From Hastings, UK
Recommended if you like Mary Margaret O’Hara, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple
Up next Old Feelings EP out now, album to follow later in 2026
The first time listening to Luki feels like a miraculous discovery of something timeless and true, as though they’ve been waiting patiently to be discovered in the noisy maelstrom of contemporary pop music. The collaborative alias of singer/composer Lucy Duncan and producer Niac, Luki write off-kilter showtunes performed as baroque art songs, embodying a seemingly contradictory combination of grand melodrama and nuanced emotional character.
Luki’s debut album Wisps was released by the excellent Glasgow-based tape label GLARC in 2018, followed by a sporadic string of singles over subsequent years. With the new EP Old Feelings, the project appears to be building up to something more substantial. The title track feels like a climactic ballad from a lost, late-period Sondheim musical by way of 90s Celine Dion: all rolling pianos and wry regrets, with synth lines lingering like dry ice. Strong, direct and rich with character, Duncan’s voice shares the wisdom and fallibility that the great Mary Margaret O’Hara has in spades.
Elsewhere on the EP, Luki’s take on Such a Small Love imagines Scott Walker remade by Sensual World-era Kate Bush. The eight minute long I Think I Know is tricksier, akin to the experimental edges of Tori Amos or Fiona Apple, meandering through sections of spoken word and textural electronics. Old Feelings is both a tantalising taster of a forthcoming album – due to feature collaborations with Robbie Ellen, AKA art-pop songwriter Personnel – and a genuinely remarkable set of songs in its own right. Claire Biddles
This week’s best new tracks
Dis Fig – The Account (ft the Wind Between)
We loved her thunderous collab album with the Body, and Felicia Chen is on equally heavy form here, singing trip-hop vox and letting off bassy depth charges under the Wind Between’s rapped existential screed.
Blonde Redhead – Blood Spilled
The art-rockers’ one-off single is no casual interstitial release, but a genuine epic, expanding across six minutes like a hot air balloon in burnt-sunset hues that keeps filling and floating away: astoundingly beautiful.
Jae Stephens – Sugar Trap
Already a fave among pop musos, the US artist feels as if she’s one step away from proper stardom thanks to high-tempo, dancefloor-flirtation snappers like this, full of strutting, mane-tossing energy.
Prodigal – The Door
Blending Deftones-style seriousness with the kind of sicko riffage that compels your tongue out of your mouth, this majestic moshpit detonator demonstrates that this new UK band are the real deal.
163Margs – Clock It
This MC is one of the most sprightly in London’s post-drill marketplace – check 2024’s Superstar if you haven’t heard it – and here he dances his flow through dreamy flutes and strings.
Kade Young – Metallic
Make sure any glassware is away from the edges of shelves if you stick on the Baltimore producer’s maximally vibrational, awesomely designed sub-bass, topped here with footwork-ish chopped-up vox.
Essence Martins – Red Velvet
Named after the type of cake loved by her ex, this track sees the UK singer-songwriter – admired by SZA – reflect on heartbreak, but the swell of beautiful Coldplay-ish sound suggests she’s being carried to a new chapter. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
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