Step Into the Diana Starshine’s Bubblegum World on "Fairy Pop"

Fairy Pop, the latest record from Bay Area darling diana starshine, is the mystical world its title promises. Entering Fairy Pop feels like stepping into a glittery forest with a cyberborgian influence and a hint of a Rainforest Café submerged in Atlantis. The record is grounded in an unreal reality, thanks to her bombastic production–one crafted alongside starshine’s long-term collaborator galen tipton. Tipton and starshine combine their talents in the power duo “Digifae,” an equally impressive project.

Fairy Pop leans into hyperpop tradition without getting lost in the saturated sea of booms, clicks, and swirling beeps and boops. Opening the record with “fallin,” a track featuring fellow hyperpopper TUNA DISPLAY, starshine grabs the listener’s hand, dragging them into a shiny new world. This soundscape she’s built isn’t all sugary sweet, seen in explosive breakdowns on songs like “feelingz,” the smooth, hi-hat rife “used2bb4,” and the aquatic “drippin.”

Fairy Pop is rife with odes to a lover, though not without a tongue-in-cheek, biting edge. “I don’t wanna get this thing wrong/I just wanna get this thing right,” she croons on “fallin.” Similarly, she admits, “You’re just like a drug to me,” in the high energy–though most of Fairy Pop qualifies as high energy–”drug2me.” On “give it away,” she turns her laments on their head, confessing “I like it when you beg me to stay” and demanding “please don’t be in love” to a lover who responds via the whispery Ari Liloia on the other side of the story.

Starshine takes the time to slows things down, like on “bathroom floor,” where she describes crying on the bathroom floor because of a failed love, and “stupid” where she and Princess Ketamine admit to being the titular stupid girls. However, true to Fairy Pop’s nature, both of the tracks crescendo in their respective second halves, blossoming into a head banger. “Stupid” punctuates the record’s end, sealing both the song and Fairy Pop with a final poof of electric fairy dust.

Diana starshine and Fairy Pop show that hyperpop isn’t dead yet, in fact, it has a shiny new face. Keep up with diana starshine on Twitter and Instagram