Dork’s Hype List is our annual spotlight on the artists who’ve started to really stand out - not because they’re destined for instant superstardom, but because there’s something in what they’re doing that feels fresh, deliberate and worth keeping close tabs on.
It isn’t about calling winners or demanding overnight breakthroughs. Consider it a guide to the acts shaping the edges of what’s next: the ones we’re excited about, curious about, and confident enough to back as they take their next steps.
Things have skyrocketed for her this year, so much so that you would think her appetite for more would’ve been whetted somewhat. But no, there’s ambition in droves with Erin, and it shines through each standout moment in her last twelve months. Carefully crafted, intricate production, live shows that seem akin to her tearing something from the deepest part of her and handing it to her audience, music videos that see her twist and transform and throw herself into it with everything she has; each facet of Erin’s career thus far has been defined by her want and need to give this her all. It’s a quality that has propelled her to this point, and one that has the steam to launch her even further.
In a busy year that has seen her release her EP ‘I Am Digital, I Am Divine’, fill out bigger and bigger rooms, and score the play Inter Alia, to name just a few things, it would be difficult for anyone to take stock of that kind of whirlwind. Erin’s committed to honouring every moment of that madness, however.
“I try to take everything in because I have a brain that moves 100 miles an hour,” Erin admits. “I keep really detailed journals of everything. Milestones, and things where you have all these goals and they happen, you have to actively try and make a memory of them because they come by without you even realising, it moves so quickly. I really do try to keep a journal or scrapbook of everything. It’s a constant sort of treadmill, but I’ve had a lot of moments this year where it’s been pinch me moments, and I’ve really felt like you have to make space to take that in for a second, because you could just keep going.”
“Live moments are always the time that you get to really be present with how much progress you’ve made,” notes Erin. “Live is the most real moment, because it’s tangible, and it’s in the room, and it’s other people. It’s not about you seeing a milestone alone; it’s a collective thing. I feel so incredibly lucky for the audience that I have. I think it’s a really, really special group of people, and I feel very honoured that they’re so creative, and they care so deeply about music. To see them at live shows, I just want to be a host for that space and that enthusiasm to any kind of art whatsoever, their passion is incredible. I’m so happy that they direct it towards my music.”
A self-taught producer, Erin favours an isolated environment when it comes to actually making her music. It takes space and privacy to really unearth the heavy weight of some of the feelings she grapples with, but the live shows create a wider world for that music to exist in.
“This year is the first time that I’ve left any kind of shell, and music has extended beyond this introverted, possessive thing for me. It belongs to other people now in a way that is really, really beautiful. Even in a physical way, it shows. I’m up there on stage alone, which is an intentional choice, but they are so loud that it kind of feels like I’m conducting a choir. I have no sense of feeling lonely or too exposed on stage because it’s such a shared experience. It’s really special. Every time I do a show, I’m shocked at how high the emotion is in the room. So much so that sometimes I forget that the songs are mine and that I wrote them; they feel like they belong to something else, and I’m totally fine with that. I think that’s beautiful, I think that’s what I want to do, and what music is meant to do in some way. It’s meant to be for me for a prolonged period of time, and it serves me a purpose, and then it serves someone else a purpose, and it gets reused and repurposed. That’s such a beautiful thing, I feel honoured to be a part of that life cycle.”
“It’s one of the things I’m proudest of. The track is, production-wise, built off my voice in a vocoder, and it just feels like my body physically aching, and my voice is stretching and distorting, and it pinpoints such a specific feeling to me. I always want to do justice to the feeling or the theme that I’m writing about, and I want to stamp a very specific feeling at a very specific point in my life. ‘Machine Ghost’ really does that to a point that it makes me borderline uncomfortable, because it takes me to that so viscerally. I’m so proud of that, because that takes a long time to do. I think always writing and making things starts with a big tangled string of thoughts and feelings are very abstract and hard to put into words, and it feels like a sigh of relief when you finally get there. It’s a four-minute summary of things you felt so intensely that you haven’t been able to verbalise before, and then it’s just there in a package, and it helps you understand yourself differently.”
‘808 HYMN’ achieves a similar feat - the anxiety of the track builds and builds throughout, deeply consuming you with every listen. There’s something really human and reflective in Erin’s music, but it is tied into these impossibly impressive arrangements. Her pop leans dystopian at times, classical at others, asking questions both sonically of how far Erin can push things, whilst also favouring a natural inquisitiveness in her lyrics.
That curiosity is an important part of Erin’s process, and a natural consequence of being left with question after question about the state of the world. In exploring her own thoughts and trying to find some clarity through writing, Erin unintentionally encourages her reader to challenge and question everything. It’s a uniquely thought-provoking stance.
“Whenever I write, I question everything about myself, about my relationships, about what I’m doing and what my place is in the world, and what’s going on. We’re making music and art in a really disrupted, uncomfortable time. When I go to make music, sometimes there is discomfort in that.
“A big theme in my writing lately is how do you make art and music and continue with life when it feels like everything is, generally in the world, burning? I have so many open-ended, unanswered questions about what I believe in and what my place is in the world, and how do I use my platform and speak about things? How do I go from watching the news and feeling completely helpless to writing a pop song? I can’t separate them. They’ve got to be intertwined in some way.
“A lot of the music that I’m making at the moment feels like a pop song with the sound of the TV or the radio in the back telling you some devastating fucking news, but that’s what it feels like to be making music at the moment. I think it feels like noise and a lot of unanswered questions, and I do believe that music and art are political and that artists have a responsibility to reflect the times that they’re in. And I’m not trying to be some like, bigger figure for that. I’m just trying to write really honestly of the grief that I think a lot of people my age are feeling right now.”
The best way to describe Erin’s music is confronting. It brings you face-to-face with parts of her, or parts of yourself reflected in her, that you might not meditate on otherwise. It calls into question the way the outside world can bleed into even the most insulated musical process. In every hard-hitting line, or euphoria-chasing kick drum, there is something to be challenged, and resisted, but also succumb to. Yes, there is unease and interrogations, but there is also release. Erin does the work to unravel these complexities, but she does so with intoxicating musicality - there’s an understanding of the push and pull between unsparing resonance and comfort, and Erin’s music manages to float between both. With that balance of anguish and solace, Erin encapsulates this specific moment from her perspective, with invigorating authenticity and detail. It’s magnetic, and easy to see how that act of documentation can only grow from here. ■
Taken from the December 2025 / January 2026 issue of Dork, out now.
