Slayyyter Is America’s Anti-Sweetheart
The Midwestern experimenteur’s third album is a gloriously messy dive into electro-noise maximalism.
by Cam Delisle
Slayyyter is over the “up-and-coming” tag – a phrase that starts as a prophecy and quickly curdles into condescension if you stay there too long. In the stretch between 2023’s Starfucker and now, the Missouri-born self-styled recession-pop instigator seriously considered stepping away from music. Instead, a sharp creative upswing – and a noticeable swell of online affection for her scuffed, trailer-trash electro-noise maximalism – made her reconsider. Thank God.
WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA’s lead single, “BEAT UP CHANEL$,” lays her case bare: “Sex, money, drugs, chains on my chest, vintage Celine,” she hollers, letting the mic – and a wall of clotted feedback – do half the interpretive work. “CRANK,” a ferocious, full‑tilt pop‑rap/nu‑metal collision, is perhaps best described by TikTok user slayyyverse: “Gay people when the LOUDEST song you’ve ever heard plays.” That specific clip – hand-on-ear Wendy Williams doing her cheeky one-two bounce – racked up 1.7 million views, crashing For You pages worldwide in a tumble of hyper-specific cultural references. It’s hard to imagine that wasn’t exactly the plan.
“YES GODDD” thrashes with shards of distorted synths, Slayyyter screaming “YES GOD! YES GOD!” until it hangs in the air. In contrast, “GAS STATION” glides on a slinky, throbbing undercurrent of techno‑leaning electronics, a wink to the melodic, pop‑smart instincts of Starfucker that somehow still feels untethered from convention. Taken as a whole, WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA turns the “worst girl” into a deliberate posture, a manifesto of audacity, and a reflection of the sound of now.
By Cam Delisle
The WOR$T GIRL IN CANADA cranked the Commodore Ballroom's volume to the max.
By Kenna Clifford
The surprise-dropped remix album transforms the resting-heart-rate meditations of her previous release into something built for the dancefloor.
By Glenn Alderson
With two albums already behind them this year and another on the way, the New Orleans band are making rock and roll faster than anyone can tell them what to do with it.
By Cam Delisle
The Slovakia-born pop ingenue embraces the messiest pleasures of stardom on her debut full-length, PRIMA.
By Kenna Clifford
Inside the Western Canadian Music Alliance’s multi-day conference and the artists worth catching this year in Victoria.
By Glenn Alderson
It’s tough to make room for a music festival when the legendary Bay Area has so much else to experience.
By Prabhjot Bains
The prevailing cinematic currents, storylines, and must-watches of TIFF’s electric 51st edition.
By Khagan Aslanov
After decades spent pushing against artistic and political boundaries, the Afrofuturist icon confronts familiar cycles of violence, resistance, and reinvention.
By Sarah Housley
Inherited memories and abandoned futures haunt the Montreal duo’s melancholic electronic world.
By Maddie Browning
On her debut album MINI SKIRT WARRIOR, the rising London songstress strikes a balance between nonchalance and yearning.