Ever since the release of her excellent debut album Immunity (which got a #14 spot in our Top 50 list of 2019‘s best albums), Clairo‘s done a lot of features on other people’s songs, and it’s been pretty hit and miss. With that hypnotic half-mumble voice, the song has to suit her for it to work – slot her in like an identikit pop singer and it sounds off. So happily for this collaboration, she and SASSY 009, aka Sunniva Lindgaard, share a stylistic kinship, and it results in something special. Ostensibly pitched as a Tomb Raider tribute, Lara swims instead as a soaring love song, built on chameleonic, shapeshifting pop. Both SASSY 009 and Clairo are kids of the Soundcloud/YouTube listening era, where you consume different influences at hyperspeed, and Lara sounds like that, skittering across lightweight beats and synths from hazy and narcotic to the irresistible sugar rush of the chorus. These two are two of the gems of the pop’s new wave, and they’ve put together an example of the genre at its modern best. Lindgaard says “I was planning on going to New York City, and figured, since Clairo already said in an interview that she wanted to collab with Sassy 009, why not try and make this happen when I’m already going transatlantic! So we made that happen. I went to Atlanta, spent three days in the studio with Clairo there, and then took off to New York. That was the birth of Lara”. Sassy 009’s new EP KILL SASSY 009 is out now.