With an alchemist’s touch, indie-pop singer-songwriter Arlo Parks transforms deep sadness into arresting beauty, proving herself a potent voice for Gen Z.

Born Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho in 2000, in Hammersmith, West London, Parks grew up obsessing over artists of all stripes, including Erykah Badu, Nick Drake, Radiohead and King Krule (who inspired the “Arlo” in her alias). When she wasn’t listening to music, she was soaking up the words of poets like Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg.

The artist stirs together all of these influences into a potent brew of spoken word, bedroom pop, indie folk and alt-R&B that mirrors the fragility of life at any given moment. This was already evident on her 2018 debut single, “Cola”, a self-produced, self-recorded lo-fi seedling for what would blossom into the velvety, thoughtfully sculpted snapshots of her life that elegantly unfold across 2021’s Collapsed in Sunbeams and 2023’s My Soft Machine.

Parks reinvented her sound, though, on 2026’s Ambiguous Desire, with the dance floor in mind, while staying true to her lyrical ethos. As she told Apple Music, “I don’t feel bound by anything that I’ve made before. These stories are still just as true and rooted in poetry, but I think you can hear a freedom.”

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