Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
With so many new female artists targeting the spot between indie and pop, Alexandra Savior has the advantage of having a big name in the NME-reading world to reassure uptight indie kids that she’s allowed in. The 21-year-old American singer, real name Alexandra McDermott, is the protegée of a fellow Alex, Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner. The pair worked together on her forthcoming debut album and have been spotted performing together at small shows in the US. She was first heard on the True Detective soundtrack last year, with a (rather dull) song she worked on with T. Bone Burnett (apparently a legend – to me he’s just the guy responsible for the Nashville soundtrack). This summer she had a Spotify viral chart hit with Shades, which the Alexes wrote with producer James Ford, whose credits include Florence & The Machine, Haim, and of course Arctic Monkeys and The Last Shadow Puppets. Her classy retro sound reminds me of several artists from the mid-2000s, when Arctic Monkeys were first around, but it would also appeal to fans of Lana Del Rey. Her new single M.T.M.E. premiered on Radio 1 last week, and she plays London’s Courtyard Theatre later this month.