is projecting a technicolour vision of Pop Girl supremacy with her new era.

The Chinese artist has worked, morphed and reconfigured programmed sensibilities into her releases since her debut in 2019, but last year’s EP, ‘’, proved a turning point. Lexie amped up turn-of-the-millennia dance-pop tropes and indie-rock anthemics whilst retaining a fanzine-esque quality to her music. It was her most experimental turn yet, fuelled by her own tech mastery alongside producers like Digitalism, Radio Mars and new co-creators Danny L Harle, Nicopop, AO Beats and more.

The EP’s centerpiece was the pulsating ‘POP GIRL’, which Lexie has now augmented into an all-women escapade, the 2-tracker ‘’. Roping in South Korean riser Yves, NYC’s BAYLI and Honduran artist Isabella Lovestory, Lexie blends club functionality with self-affirming, state-of-the-art pop.

For CLASH, Lexie Liu breaks down a chapter defined by instinct and experimentation, and how her version of ‘Pop Girl’ differs what came before.

Last year you released your EP ‘’ which served as a bit of palette cleanser. A year on, what are you most proud of about that work?  

I’m most proud that I let it be a little freer. I’d spent a lot of time building these very considered worlds around my music, and with ‘Teenage Ramble’, I wanted to leave more of the actual person in the songs. I was making room for the curiosity and messiness I didn’t always allow myself before. I also took on so much of the writing, production and recording myself. A year later, I’m proud that it still sounds like me figuring things out in real time! 

The EP introduced us to the track ‘POP GIRL’. When you sat down to write that track what did you most want to communicate? 

When I wrote ‘POP GIRL’, I was spending more time on social media and thinking about how strange and complex it feels to be seen by so many people. You can feel so confident one minute with all the likes and then start questioning yourself the next moment you see a negative comment. I wanted the song to hold both feelings. It has that playful pop energy, but there’s some anxiety underneath it too. To me, a “pop girl” can be anyone who’s trying things out, enjoying being fabulous and visible, and figuring out who they are along the way.

What releases in the historic pop pantheon are your reference points? 

I always come back to that late 2000s era of pop. Records like Britney’s ‘Blackout’ felt so much bigger than everyday life to me. I grew up listening to them and imagining these whole worlds I could step into. There was something dreamy and unreal about them, and they made my own future feel more open. I still want pop to give me that feeling of escape. I love its scale, and the way a song can make your world feel bigger for a few minutes.

In your own words, what does version of pop music entail? How would you distinguish a “pop girl” now from what came before?

My version of pop is music that gives you a feeling you can step into. I love a big hook and a world that feels larger than life. I also want it to leave room for someone else to see themselves in it. The pop girls I grew up with made me dream. I think what’s exciting now is that the idea can belong to anyone. You might be making the music, or you might be walking down the street with a song on and feeling like the main character. They all feel like pop girl energy to me.

Last month, you shared the collaborative ‘POP GIRLS CLUB’ EP. It shows how borderless and open your vision is. In which ways did Yves, BAYLI and Isabella Lovestory coincide with the world you built with this track?

What drew me to all three of them was how clearly each has her own world. You can hear a song or see an image and feel the person behind it. That felt very close to what I wanted ‘POP GIRLS CLUB’ to be about. I was curious what would happen if I invited them into the concept and gave each of them room to be herself. The two versions ended up feeling like different ways of entering the same world, which is exactly what made the idea of a exciting to me.

With Yves, we explored the vulnerable side of a pop girl that people don’t always get to see. There’s a quiet intimacy to our version, like you’re hearing how we feel when no one’s watching at night. Bayli comes in and owns the room; she brings this fearless confidence that changes the whole energy of the song. Isabella turns it into her telenovela, the slow motion entrance, everyone watching and she brings all the drama. She has so much fun with the concept and her words. 

When a listener presses play on the ‘POP GIRLS CLUB’ EP, what do you want the listener to walk away feeling? 

I hope they recognise themselves in it. There are moments of total confidence on the EP, and moments when you can hear how sensitive the person behind that confidence really is. I think most of us know both feelings. If someone hears the EP and feels like there’s room for all of that in one person, I’d be really happy.

There’s something particularly special about your collaboration with Yves, a fellow Asian artist. What would you say to people – fans and critics alike – who homogenise Asian artists?  

I’ve been a fan of Yves’s work since ‘Loop’, so getting to work together felt special to me on a very personal level. What I admire about her is how clearly you can hear her own taste and instincts in everything she does. I wish people would listen to Asian artists as individuals and be curious about what makes each person’s work their own. We all come from different places and make such different choices in our music. There’s so much to hear when you let each person introduce themselves through their work.

Talk me through the visual for ‘POP GIRL’. What eras, tropes and iconography did you want to invoke? 

The visual draws on the pop stars I grew up watching in the late 2000s and early 2010s. I was thinking about music television, teen magazines, beauty ads, and the images of pop stars that appeared in tabloids. Back then, I only saw them through those particular windows, so they felt almost larger than life and unreal. Now we see artists everywhere, all the time, and that kind of visibility brings its own anxiety. I wanted the video to hold onto the fantasy I felt as a kid while showing what it can feel like to live inside that image today. 

You have an eclectic palette. Which artists are you enjoying right now? Who is breaking new ground for you? 

I’ve been listening to Boards of Canada’s ‘Inferno’, and I’ve had Belle Chen, Tamaryn, Fimiguerrero, Young Miko, Taichu and kwn in rotation too. They take me to completely different places. Belle Chen is someone whose work feels especially exciting to me right now. I love the way she brings piano together with electronic sounds and recordings from the world around her. Listening to her makes me imagine new ways of building a world inside a song.

Looking ahead, what can you tease about your future output? What are you working on? Is there a new project on the horizon? 

I’ve been working on a new album since last summer. I’ve been thinking about it as a journey through different versions of myself. There’s a mythic thread running through it, grounded in feelings I’ve experienced in real life. Sonically, I’m giving myself room to explore a lot of different directions. I’m still discovering what it wants to be, which is the exciting part right now.