Glitch Princess

For the Singapore-born singer and producer, virtual reality is reality. Her yeule persona, named for a Final Fantasy character, is something of a high-concept art-pop cyborg, a Tumblr kid-turned-Twitch streamer whose aesthetics draw from art-house anime, digital RPGs, and niche online subcultures like seapunk and witch house. Her second album, Glitch Princess, takes her sound even further down the post-Grimes cyber-pop rabbit hole; industrial screeches, 8-bit bleeps, and humanoid spoken-word interludes abound. (Five tracks feature co-production from Danny L Harle, a master at divining emotion from digital artifice.) “I like making up my own world/And the people who live inside me,” yeule murmurs like a shy Vocaloid in the opener, “My Name Is Nat Ćmiel.” But there’s a rawness pulsing through the project, a decidedly human heartbeat—most strikingly on “Don’t Be So Hard on Your Own Beauty,” a poignant indie-rock ballad hiding in the midst of the digital decay.