9 underscores songs you need in your life

One of underscores’s earliest internet hits, “Spoiled Little Brat” represents the dominant styles of her earlier period. It’s defined by its pop punk panache and April’s always impressive sound design with surprising glitches, toy-like synth melodies, and pugnacious lyrics: “I’m a spoiled little brat and I get what I want!”

underscores is often talked about for her whiz kid production, but I actually think her super power is her songwriting, which is sensitive, detailed, and filled with personality. “The fish song,” the quiet penultimate track on her 2021 debut, fishmonger, turns a strange story of a rare fish found in the Philippines into a moving song about impermeable. oklou even covered it for the deluxe version of her classic album, choke enough.

An early preview of underscores’s eventual full turn towards pop, this gabby start-featured cut off of 2021’s boneyard aka fearmonger hopscotches between dubstep and math rock, all while retaining a bubblegum catchiness.

Have you ever heard a quiet, story-based piece of acoustic guitar folk that begins and ends with pure dubstep cacophony? I hadn’t until I heard “Gunk” — one of underscores’s biggest songwriting and production flexes in a catalogue filled with them.

Only underscores could turn “arms, body, legs, flesh, skin, bone, sinew” into an inescapable ear worm. This single off 2023’s rock-forward Wallsocket expands the record’s dreamy suburban mythology into flirty and finger wagging terrain.

Arguably the biggest hit off of U, “Music” doubles as a spirited song about having a crush and the necessity of music. Come for the delicious triplet rhythms and stay for the sparkling chorus.

This felt like the moment underscores leveled up into a true pop performer, choreo and all. A glimmering combination of early aughts Timbaland-style production with contemporary k-pop perfection, with lyrics that find her truly talking her shit (“People get my lyrics tattooed on their bodies”).

A song that sounds like its title: “Bodyfeeling” is funky, embodied, and its bass hits you in the gut. It’s among underscores’s most evocative and flirty tracks.

The sleeper viral hit off of U is the album’s central ballad. Over a vowel-only, Imogen Heap-style stack of harmonies, underscores sings of a series of run ins with a crush. It reminds me of songs like “The fish song” which let underscores’s wildly effective writing take center stage. Read The FADER’s full review of “The Peace” here.