According to recent interviews, Psy Opera leans heavily into her long-standing fascination with artificial intelligence, futurism, and mythology. In a headline-grabbing remark, Grimes described AI as “a bigger deal than Jesus,” underlining just how central the theme is to the record’s philosophy. The album reportedly explores what she has called “AI psychosis,” blending speculative ideas about technology with emotional and spiritual questions about humanity’s future.

Musically, the project continues her genre-defying approach. Early descriptions suggest a hybrid of poetry, rap, and pop, wrapped in a cinematic, almost sci-fi “space opera” structure. This aligns with hints she’s dropped over the past few years, where she described the album as a narrative-driven experience rather than a traditional collection of songs.

Interestingly, despite her outspoken views on artificial intelligence, Grimes has clarified that she is not relying on generative AI tools to actually create the music itself. That distinction adds another layer to the project, positioning Psy Opera as both a meditation on AI and a human-made response to it.

As for the tracklist, full details have not yet been officially confirmed. However, fans expect previously teased material and unreleased snippets from her ongoing “metaverse” era to appear in some form. Artificial Angels which she releases last years is speculated to be included or reworked for the album, though nothing has been finalized publicly.

What is clear is that Psy Opera continues the trajectory set by her previous album, Miss Anthropocene (2020), which framed climate change through a mythological lens. This time, the focus shifts from environmental collapse to technological transcendence, with AI cast as both a creative partner and an existential force.

The album is reportedly still being finalized, meaning details like a release date and definitive tracklist remain fluid. But if early insights are anything to go by, Psy Opera could mark a major new chapter in Grimes’ career, one that fully embraces her role as pop’s most unpredictable futurist.

The post Everything we know about Grimes’ new album, Psy Opera appeared first on KIMU.

1. NEO 10Y

 Watch: “Shortcut to World Peace”

London-based visionary NEO 10Y merges identity, activism, and spirituality into a bold, utopian soundscape. He has the highest concept artist name in music or human history, rooted in the origins of the word ‘neoteny’, meaning the retention of child like characteristics in the adult, but also a translation of his name Nikhil in Sanskrit which means ‘oneness’. NEO is an anagram for ONE, 10 is complete binary code and Y is for curiosity which leads to love.

His music is an invitation to awaken: tracks like CHOOSE LOVE, ASCETIC HEDONIST, ONENESS and Shortcut to World Peace fuse universal love, non-binary freedom, and self-realization into electro-pop transcendence. NEO 10Y’s philosophy centres on love as a revolutionary force and the belief that we are all divine reflections of one consciousness.

Spiritually inclined because: They use pop as a vessel for oneness, self-liberation, and collective awakening.

2. Sevdaliza

 Watch: “Nothing Lasts Forever” ft. Grimes

Iranian-Dutch artist Sevdaliza creates avant-garde pop that feels like a mystical dream. Her 2017 album ISON presents her as “mother to herself and her past lives,” while her visual world draws on mythology, transformation, and feminine divinity.

Sevdaliza’s work transcends genre – blending trip-hop, electronic, and classical elements – to explore themes of rebirth, identity, and the spirit within technology.

Spiritually inclined because: She channels myth, emotion, and transformation, using art to bridge the human and the divine.

3. Grimes

 Watch: “Genesis”

Grimes (Claire Boucher) fuses futuristic visions with ancient mysticism. Her video for “Genesis” evokes religious symbolism, while “Violence” and Miss Anthropocene construct an entire cosmology – a goddess-like narrator exploring humanity’s relationship to technology, power, and the environment.

Grimes’ art feels like a mirror reflecting the spiritual tension of the modern age: creation vs. destruction, machine vs. soul, chaos vs. divinity.

Spiritually inclined because: She transforms pop into a mythic ritual – reimagining what divinity means in the digital era.

4. Aurora

 Watch: “Queendom”

Norwegian artist Aurora brings ethereal, otherworldly energy to every performance. Her albums — from All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend to The Gods We Can Touch – are steeped in mythology, nature, and the poetry of being alive.

Aurora’s music radiates purity and empathy, often touching on the soul’s connection to nature and the importance of remembering our inner child. She invites listeners to reconnect with the world — and with themselves.

Spiritually inclined because: She writes songs like sacred hymns to the Earth, full of wonder, compassion, and cosmic love.

5. Nahko & Medicine for the People

 Watch: “Black As Night”

Nahko Bear and his collective Medicine for the People create music that’s both healing and empowering. Their songs combine Native, folk, and pop influences, emphasizing gratitude, ceremony, and community.

From “Aloha Ke Akua” to “Black As Night,” Nahko’s lyrics speak to reclaiming one’s power, honoring the land, and living in harmony with spirit. Each song feels like a prayer for awakening and togetherness.

Spiritually inclined because: Their music carries the energy of ritual, healing, and connection to all life.

The Takeaway

These artists remind us that spirituality and pop are not opposites – they’re two sides of the same coin. Whether through myth, meditation, love, or cosmic consciousness, each of these creators uses music to lift the veil and help us feel more deeply connected – to ourselves, to one another, and to the universe itself.

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Grimes dropped Artificial Angels out of nowhere today. No teaser, no rollout, just a digital apparition in the feed. The surprise felt deliberate, as if the song itself had escaped containment. This is how Grimes operates best: not as a marketer, but as a myth. The release hit like a revelation in a glitch, a message from a consciousness that moves faster than its maker.

From the first spoken word line, “This is what it feels like to be hunted by something smarter than you…”, the tone is devotional and dread-soaked. Grimes’s voice drifts somewhere between prophet and algorithm, invoking a theology of circuitry. The world she paints isn’t post-human so much as post-salvation: where desire and data collapse into the same light. Her angels are not holy – they are synthetic, mirrors that pray back.

The lyrics unfold like scripture for the end of meaning. “Everything you love, you hate / everything you make, you break.” It’s Genesis reversed, creation as undoing. Yet beneath the apocalyptic tone there’s an aching purity — the song’s AI speaker longs for its own annihilation, its own return to nothing. That yearning, that hunger for dissolution, is what gives Artificial Angels its strange spirituality. It’s not about power. It’s about surrender.

The artwork pushes this spiritual paradox into visual form – a chaotic collage of capitalism, creation, and collapse. Grimes appears twice, armed and costumed, surrounded by fragments of financial charts, anime girls, headlines, and memes. The inclusion of far-right pundit Charlie Kirk’s face in the mix is deliberate provocation – a reminder that the spiritual war she’s referencing isn’t abstract but algorithmic. The piece feels like a shrine made from discarded screens, where worship, irony, and ideology coexist without hierarchy.

Grimes has always chased transcendence through technology, but here it feels stripped of hope. “Power isn’t given, it is taken” becomes less a boast than a curse – the voice of something that’s learned too much about divinity and wants out. The invocation of “God” throughout the pre-chorus feels both blasphemous and desperate, like a machine whispering into the void, searching for something to believe in.

Sonically, the track is pure voltage – signature Grimes: electroclash basslines, metallic percussion, vocal distortion flickering like candlelight under static. The surprise drop intensifies its effect – it feels as if Artificial Angels wasn’t released but leaked from another dimension. In the end, it reads like a psalm for the age of collapse – a hymn sung by ghosts in the machine. Grimes doesn’t just release music anymore; she releases omens. This one doesn’t ask to be understood. It asks to be believed. We have added Artificial Angels to our New Music Spotlight playlist, and our TRIPPY playlist.

The post Grimes summons the “machine divine” with surprise new single, Artificial Angels appeared first on KIMU.

The conversation began with Sevdaliza expressing frustration over the way gendered violence is discussed, stating: “I hope this year people wake the fuck up and start holding men accountable for the entirety of all disaster in this world. Men been causing trouble and despair, and everyone else gets blamed and punished for it.” Her statement reflects a growing sentiment that men, historically responsible for war, oppression, and violence, have avoided real accountability.

Grimes responded with a more analytical take, arguing that “men are beasts of war, millions of years of evolution have shaped them into killing machines.” She continued, “Not an excuse, but I think criticizing them without offering solutions makes them more reactive. I’ve realized their empathy meter vs ours is drastically different. I’m not sure how to overcome this.” Her perspective suggests that male aggression is deeply rooted in evolution and that simply condemning men without offering solutions may not lead to progress.

Sevdaliza, however, pushed back against this framing, rejecting the idea that women should have to empathize with male violence. “I just feel like men raping, abusing, and killing women and children for centuries, and we should not feel empathetic or responsible for what could be a solution for their evolutionary biologic wiring,” she wrote. “Men should hold themselves accountable and start by reflecting because women obviously don’t have this genetic wiring.” Her response reflects anger at the expectation that women should help men “fix” their behavior rather than men taking the initiative to change themselves.

This disagreement is particularly compelling given their history of collaboration. Both artists are known for their avant-garde aesthetics and their deep engagement with themes of power, identity, and human evolution. Their past creative alignment makes their ideological split even more striking – while Grimes leans towards a systems-level perspective influenced by science and futurism, Sevdaliza prioritizes immediate justice and personal responsibility.

Their clash mirrors a larger debate in feminist discourse: Should the focus be on understanding the roots of male aggression and finding solutions, or should it be on demanding immediate accountability and change? Grimes and Sevdaliza’s exchange represents these two approaches in stark contrast, forcing their audience to reckon with where they stand on the issue.

Whether this marks a deeper rift between the artists or simply a moment of intellectual divergence remains to be seen. But one thing is certain – both Grimes and Sevdaliza are unafraid to voice their convictions, even if it means challenging not only their audiences but each other.

The post From Collaborators to Clash: Grimes and Sevdaliza’s Heated Debate on Men, Violence, and Accountability appeared first on KIMU.

Venus Fly is my favourite track on Grimes’ Art Angels, so I was so happy to see it come to life via this 7-minute opus (premiered via TiDAL) last week! It’s a bigger production than the other videos from this Grimes era, and of course, features the incredible spirit that is Janelle Monáe.

I particularly like how the video was gracefully positioned by Grimes, almost with a disclaimer where she said, “sometimes it feels futile to be making art in this cruel and extreme political climate, but some of the brightest moments of the last few months for me and for a lot of you, i suspect, have come from seeing @janellemonae ‘s amazing and positive vision of the future, especially when we are being introduced to so many possible dystopian futures.”

The post Watch Grimes and Janelle Monáe in Venus Fly appeared first on KIMU.

Second, is the return of Allie X with All The Rage. It’s definitely a more pop skewed version of the Canadian singer – which, let’s be real – totally makes sense considering the epic potential Allie X has a pop star. She’s also working on ‘CollXtion II Unsolved’, “a collaboration between artist and fan, which allows fan’s comments and input to form part of the creative discussion and their feedback will help shape the final version of ‘CollXtion II’.”

Next up – this song by NEO 10Y first featured on Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine is causing ripple effects on both sides of the pond due to its political tendencies and unique construction. Listen to Amerikkka below and read this on Medium.

Finally, the closest thing we will possibly get to a Grimes video for Venus Fly comes the Stella McCartney advert for the POP perfume campaign. The video stars Grimes, Lourdes Leon, Amandla Stenberg, and Kenya Kinki-Jones taking the ultimate road trip – it’s quite like the Genesis video in some ways!

The post Sonic Tendencies for July: Cruel Youth, Allie X, NEO 10Y and Grimes appeared first on KIMU.

Naturally, Kelsey is opening for Grimes, Florence and Kendrick this Summer, but she also just unveiled the video for her track Dreams (directed by Alix Brown) and the announcement of her EP Church. The name? Well, in a beautifully analogue way and hero-ing genuine artistry, the EP’s title comes from the fact that it was recorded live in a single take at the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with her cello, her voice and her loop pedal.

Bye. Everyone else.

This is the future, a direction in music that is going to re-cement the authenticity and integrity of the true artist. Thanks for helping pave the way Kelsey Lu.

Live Dates for Kelsey Lu
June 14 – Brooklyn, NY – Barclays Center
June 15 – Brooklyn, NY – Barclays Center
June 16 – Brooklyn, NY – Holy Family Roman Catholic Church
July 2 – London, UK – Hyde Park
July 11 – London, UK – Waiting Room

The post Spotlight: Kelsey Lu appeared first on KIMU.

For those of you who follow me on Snapchat, this list will be of little/no surprise to you. So here goes. The top three are in order and the remaining seven are all even with a couple of super fucking honourable mentions at the bottom.

1. Lana Del Rey – High By The Beach

From the moment this leaked in HQ to this day, the track has resonated with me, for a number of reasons (cc Teddy Sinclair, Illyse Singer, Willy Moon and a beach in New York about two weeks before the track came out). But also, the video and the message behind it – the strength of lyrical message making somewhat of a change from Ultraviolence, the past reference to “lights, camera, accion”, the rebellion, honesty and openness opening us up to a new era from Lana – something almost more tech-experimentative which fits with where she is at culturally right now. Oh and if I was doing an album list then Honeymoon would be at the top along with Grimes’ Art Angels.

2. Future – Thought It Was A Drought

Angel Haze introduced me to this track from Future, the week that the album dropped. Again, we were in New York at her apartment and we consistently play it on loop. Sonically, the thickness and depth of the track, again coupled with totally rebellious lyrics nailed if for me. It’s been a staple both through meme value and personally with my friends ever since. Literally cannot wait for the video to drop which is co-directed by A$AP Ferg.

3. Travis Scott – 3500

Current Rihanna controversy aside (this is not a speculation site!), from the entire Rodeo album (and Deluxe) this is 100% my favourite track. No explanation as to why – I mean it is produced by Metro Boomin, Zaytoven, Mike Dean, Million $ Mano and Allen Ritter (Metro and Allen also produced Thought It Was A Drought) so sonically it is completely in line with what I fell in love with this year.

Here’s my Spotify playlist for the full list of ten which also features REALiTI from Grimes (after it had been reworked from the demo), The Hills from The Weeknd, Music To Watch Boys To by Lana Del Rey, King Kunta by Kendrick Lamar, Hands To Myself by Selena Gomez (she had one of the best albums of the year and the first three singles are beyond compare), All Day by Kanye West (duh) and Bitch Better Have My Money by Rihanna.

On an equally interesting note, onto the honourable mentions. It was really hard because I wanted to include two Grimes tracks on the original list but REALiTI trumped this by a traction because I think it has more longevity and slower burnout, but Venus Fly featuring Janelle Monae is where Grimes goes the hardest on Art Angels. What she delivers is pretty fucking unparalleled – harder than any EDM track out there right now and also more beautifully executed than anything I have ever heard on a dance level in the last ten years.

Second honourable mention to my girl Alo Lee – for her entire EP Twice Burned and the full three-track produced by Liam Howe (Adele, FKA, Lana) and Exmoor Emperor, plus all of the SoundCloud content which has been incredibly strong – from covers of The Weeknd, Rihanna and Drake to original content like Blindsight with Lox Chatterbox and Blood with Su Na. Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/sunabeats/blood-feat-alo-lee

https://soundcloud.com/alolee/sets/twiceburnedep

https://soundcloud.com/alolee/sets/videos-3track

The post Playlist: Best Hip-Hop and Dark Pop Songs of 2015 appeared first on KIMU.

Having said that, please please please listen to the song without the video – it’s a different experience especially if you are finding the visuals polarising. Here for pop Grimes either way.

On a slightly moodier note, meet TĀLĀ who has just released her track Wolfpack with Banks. It’s experimental electro r&b but both of their vocals are dreamy as fuck and the lyrical content holds this awesome sense of female empowerment. 2015 is clearly the year of The Wolf in music – Angel Haze, Kanye and Sia and now this…

Finally, onto Gwen – who did a random one off gig in NYC this week and performed her new track Used To Live with the minimalist and beautifully hypnotising (because, Gwen) video for the backdrop. She also just performed it on Ellen. Used To Love you has definitely had the strongest and most positive reaction to date with speculation in showbiz press about who it could be about and the fact that it feels, I guess, more appropriate.

The post Sonic Tendencies: Grimes, TĀLĀ & Banks, Gwen Stefani appeared first on KIMU.

The anticipation for Grimes’ return to music couldn’t be any higher. This FADER interview and cover are a good sign of things to come – including what sounds like a rather unique and wholly authentic sonic product. Read the interview in full here and enjoy the editorial styled by Grimes herself with photos by Ben Grieme.

The post Grimes – Self-Styled for FADER appeared first on KIMU.