Toying with dark sensualness, the first half of the song, “Playboy” starts with a dissonant melody with Shygirl cooling rapping over the top. In the video, a bikini-clad woman spins around a pole in a dark room an eerie face-printed mask obscuring her face. Shy introduces the second half of the song by uttering, “Wait let me just change positions quickly”, the beat quickening with the singer adopting a breathier vocal style. The video for the “Positions” portion features two tattooed men wrestling on a dry grassy football pitch.

Watch the video below:

Irish singer Cosha, English record producer Karma Kid, and English producer to the stars Mura Masa all worked with the singer on the single. London-based photographer Samuel Ibram teamed up with Shygirl once again for the haunting video. He previously directed the video for Shygirl and Björk’s “Woe (I See It From Your Side)” as well as photographed Shy for the cover for Nymph.

Nymph_o, the deluxe version of Shygirl’s 2022 debut album, Nymph, will be available on streaming on the 14^th of this month. The album will contain reimagines and remixes of songs on the original LP as well as some brand-new tracks like “Playboy/Positions”. So far, Shygirl has released three other songs that will feature on Nymph_o: a club mix of “Poison”, a reimagining of “Heaven” featuring the celestial vocals of alt R&B singer Tinashe, and Björk’s ethereal remix “Woe (I See It From Your Side)”. The genre-bending LP will also feature Eartheater and Arca. To preorder the album click here.

Southeast London rapper, DJ, and singer-songwriter Blane Muise, better known as Shygirl, entered the scene in 2017 receiving praise for her unique deconstructed club and experimental hip hop sound. Her debut EP Cruel Practice and her sophomore EP Alias caught the attention of Pitchfork, NME, Vogue, and Crack Magazine.

Currently, Shygirl is performing in North America on her Nymph World Tour. She will be performing at several festivals later this summer including Wide Awake Festival, Parklife, Flow Festival, and Øyafestivalen. For tickets see here.

For Shygirl’s UK & Europe dates see below:

27/05/23 – Wide Awake Festival – London
10/06 – Parklife – Manchester
09/08 – Øyafestivalen – Oslo
11/08 – Flow Festival – Helsinki

The woman is of course a proxy for Arca herself, though it’s important to note that being a trans woman means the insult – which deliberately uses a masculine word – has cruelly transphobic implications. It’s a testament to the Venezuelan producer that she not only withstands the attack, but belittles her abusers by wearing their slur as a badge of honour. 

First made available to stream digitally on the 17th, NME reported that Arca considered “Mequetrefe” to be a manifesto in “the tenderness behind expressing who you are without shame, and the confidence and bravery it requires”. As with previous singles “Time” and “Nonbinary”, the song has now received visual treatment with a video co-directed by Arca and her partner Carlos Sáez. 

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the Mequetrefe video is out now! the journey of making of this video with @carlossaez1 and @wifiovermybody has been one of the most alchemical transformative processes I’ve ever experienced making a video. Thank you to both of you for your vision, patience, boldness, and sensitivity! To all of you who watch it, please let us know if you enjoy the video :] <3 together we did our best to lovingly, and with care, conceive and produce the video over the course of lockdown, in times when creating sometimes felt like a leap of faith! so it has been a great pleasure and honor to be a part of this collaboration , I love the video so much! I hope you have fun watching it! In virtue of the evemorphing, shifting and ripping of selfstates in constant permutation in transition toward the unknown nurturing a faith love as a light in the face of change. <3 ya esta aqui el video de Mequetrefe ! el proceso de crear este video con @carlossaez1 y @wifiovermybody has sido de las experiencias mas alquímicas y transormativas q he vivido en crear un music video. Gracias a uds. dos por su visión, su paciencia, sus ganas de echarle pichón y por tener tanta sensibilidad. A todxs uds. q lo vean, avísanos si te gusta el video! <3 trabajamos juntxs con mucho esmero y cariño para concebir y producir el video durante la cuarantena para seguir nuestro instinto de crear algo, incluso en aquellos momentos de mayor incertidumbre, y es un placer y un honor se parte de esta colaboración, me encanta taaaaanto el video ! Gracias <3 En virtud de la transmutación y la mutación, el misterio de lo desconocido, en transición constante, nutriendo la fe en el amor como una luz en virtud del cambio. <3

A post shared by Doña Arca (@arca1000000) on Jun 25, 2020 at 3:34pm PDT

Dreamt up and filmed by the two of them whilst isolating together, Arca and Sáez approached the Shanghai-based animator Kynan Puru Watt who fed close to 10,000 frames of Arca into a computer program to create the shifting, mutating face-to-face shots that make up the video. In an Instagram that was posted today, she called the production of the video “one of the most alchemical transformative processes I’ve ever experienced”, thanking the “vision, patience, boldness, and sensitivity” of her two collaborators.

Born in Caracas 31 years ago as Alejandro Ghersi, transition has been a recurring motif in Arca’s life. Moving from Connecticut back to Caracas during her childhood, the Venezuelan began to make a name for herself by producing avant-garde electropop from her bedroom, before returning to the US to study at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU. As her following grew, she gained high-profile production credits on Kanye West’s wildly experimental Yeezus album, as well as several early FKA twigs EPs. In 2014 she moved to Dalston in East London where she has since lived, and turned more heads by producing three of the songs on FKA twigs’ debut album, as well as much of the programming for Björk’s Vulnicura (who provides vocals on the KiCK i track “Afterwards”). In 2018, Arca came out as a trans woman, and has since been known privately by the feminine form of her name ‘Alejandra’.

KiCK i will be Arca’s first new album since her 2017 self-titled project, though earlier this month she released the hour long single “@@@@@” as well as the charity single “unconditional” with another guest on her new album, Shygirl. KiCK i is available to stream and download now, with a vinyl release coming next month via XL Recordings. Watch the video for “Mequetrefe” below:

Having first engaged with this initiative back in March to roaring success, Bandcamp offered to waive their revenue fee (15% of digital sales and 10% of merchandise) on the first Fridays of May, June, and July, in an effort to support musicians whose touring income had been compromised by COVID-19. “Many artists have found merch and digital sales to be a last remaining financial lifeline”, read a statement from their newsfeed, “so, it’s more important than ever for fans to support musicians by purchasing from them directly”. 

Though the initial aim of supporting working musicians did remain (and with live touring not expected to return until late 2021, will likely continue to be an ongoing priority), the emergence of worldwide protests against police brutality towards black communities caused Bandcamp to urge those participating to redirect their aid to a list of artists and labels that were in turn donating to the protests. Last week the company announced that every Juneteenth (the 19th of June) they would be donating 100% of their profits to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, in addition to an annual pledge allocating $30,000 every year to organisations “that fight for racial justice and create opportunities for people of color”.  

Nestled amongst a laundry list of figures from the music industry that were “donating their share to organisations in support of racial justice and change”, the latest release from Arca and Shygirl is a contorting deluge of glitchy ambient pop, whose swift two-minute runtime is designed less for lasting impact and more for shock and awe. In a press release posted onto its Bandcamp page supplemented by lists of black trans charities and anti-racist reading, Shygirl said in a lengthy statement: 

“I wrote the lyrics to this song a while ago, originally thinking of love, family, betrayal and ultimately strength in adversity. It was only this week that I thought of this song again with everything going on. The emotion of the song still rang true but this time in a wider way, a bigger family, a deeper betrayal, a greater need for love. It felt right to share this now and I hope it means something to you.” 

The single “unconditional” comes ahead of Arca’s hotly anticipated fourth studio album KiCK i, slated for release on the 26th of June via XL Recordings. Alongside contributions from art pop juggernauts SOPHIE, Rosalía, and Björk, we know from the tracklist us that “Watch” will see these two London-based artists reunited on the same track for the second time this year.

We’ll have to wait patiently for the duo’s next collaboration, but to last us until then Arca has unveiled a music video for her latest single “Time”. Watch below: