lonesome

Editors’ Notes “Lonely is a place I go,” sings laye on her debut album, and over the course of these 11 tracks, she lets you know exactly what it feels like to live there. The Montreal alt-pop siren follows down the dimly lit path of late-2010s pop’s elite sad-girl squad, channeling the femme fatale allure of Lana Del Rey, the dark minimalism of Lorde, and the ticking-time-bomb intensity of Billie Eilish. But laye is distinguished by her striking, no-filter candor, whether she’s laying her lovesick emotions bare over the tremorous trap beats of “likefck” or using the neon-tinted, after-hours R&B of “better” to lure a platonic relationship out of the friend zone. And when she’s not singing about her broken heart, laye comes clean about what she does to treat it: With the lush, ’80s-glossed closer “lonely anthem,” she seeks solidarity with all the other lost souls who’ve found themselves drowning their sorrows on a barstool at last call.