The dark angel of alt-pop gives wings to wild dreams and desires, confronting the demons of young adulthood with spine-tingling honesty.
Isabel LaRosa found viral fame when the rolling, neon-tinged ballad ‘i’m yours’ struck a chord with the Tik-Tok generation. Surrendering to the thrill and danger of young love, her haunting, gossamer vocals quickly revealed a music-savvy adolescent brought up on a family diet of jazz standards, now directing her own videos while exploring ever-shifting shapes of alternative pop.
The release of her 2022 single was populated on either side by the likes of ‘HAUNTED’ and ‘older’, juggling pulse-racing electro-pop and breathy, bass-drenched confessionals as the singer explored low-lit corners of pop with an exhilarating sense of adventure. With a saxophone player dad and a musician-producer brother, Thomas, a trusty companion and collaborator on his sister’s burgeoning career, LaRosa had anything but a static view of pop or an output shaped by trends, getting rather busy creating them instead. Threading sombre electro touches, steadfast ’00s alternative and the widescreen allure of Drive, she harks back to the past with a defining 2020s lens, inviting her peers to wade the treacherous waters of adulthood and face the future with a bracingly sincere, dark-pop sense of anticipation.
She poses holding a crucifix on 2023 EP YOU FEAR THE GOD THAT LOVES YOU, juxtaposing spirituality and lust in daredevil pop contrasts. In a nod to her Cuban-American roots, she yearningly mixes English and Spanish in later, reggaeton-inflected love anthem ‘Favorite’; and, feeling already old at “almost 20”, she contemplates loneliness and sisterhood on the urgent, breakbeat-driven ‘Home’. The last two tracks feature among the 14 personal stories that make up LaRosa’s 2025 debut LP Raven – her symbolic twist on a self-titled album, produced and co-written by her brother – charting love and separation as she overcomes a bad break-up in an unknown, grown-up world. Sensuous or lovesick, her whispery vocals anchor an album flitting between unwavering self-assurance and acoustic sensibility, mean alt-rock riffage and fragile balladry.
On ‘Girl Of Your Dreams’ LaRosa interpolates Lesley Gore’s trademark ‘60s feminist anthem ‘You Don’t Own Me’ (more recently covered by SAYGRACE and G-Eazy), taking on new meaning as she propels it to an often ominous decade with an electric pop-R&B flick of the wrist. Named one of Spotify’s Pop Rising Artists To Watch the previous year, she embarks on her PSYCHOPOMP tour in 2025 with fresh promise and an album that “has gotten me through some of the worst times of my life and also seen me in my happiest times,” as she reveals on her socials. One by one, the songs strip back the layers of an artist who embraces darkness as a way to stumble back to the light —and triumph. And she is now more than ready to take centre stage.
