Alessi Rose - Voyeur EP

Alessi Rose doesn’t so much write songs as detonate little truth bombs in the middle of your emotional landscape. On ‘Voyeur’, her debut EP for Polydor, the 22-year-old Derby native turns every overshare, overthink and oversensitive spiral into slick, smart, sad-girl anthems with bite.

There’s a delicious boldness to the whole thing. It opens with 'Same Mouth' – a highlight – which pairs noughties teen movie guitars with lines like "It’s kinda masochistic / I’ll hurt myself so you fix it". It’s not vulnerability for vulnerability’s sake, but something more assertive: self-destruction on her own terms. "Maybe I’m not the victim, maybe I’m actually in control," she suggests, casually reframing the chaos with a knowing shrug.

Alessi’s lyrical voice is at once hyper-intimate and cinematic. There’s no holding back. 'That Could Be Me' sees her lean into obsession with the kind of hungry detail that’d make Lorde blush: "Rip out my heart / throw it out on the concrete, baby." It’s big, blown-out alt-pop with jagged guitars, live drums and the sort of hooks you don’t walk away from easily.

'Dumb Girl' is equally exposing. Over slow-burning production, she sings: "Your tongue fits in my mouth like it’s by design" – a line so confident, so casually shocking, it deserves to be carved into the canon of great pop confessions. It’s that balance of self-deprecation and swagger, honesty and humour, that makes 'Voyeur' so compelling: there’s always a pinch of salt in the sugar.

At its heart, 'Voyeur' is a document of a young woman watching herself mess up in real time and making brilliant pop out of the wreckage. Brave, spiky and self-assured, it marks Alessi Rose not just as one to watch, but one who’s already arrived.