yeule - Evangelic Girl is a Gun (2025)

There's a very telling moment in Yeule's "Eko," the sweetest-sounding song you've ever heard about obsession. Disguised as a perfect little dance-riffic candy shell with hype-pop touches and disco bass, it details "a living, breathing unreal being who lives inside my head." But the bitter inside is revealed after the singer and producer coos, "Inside my head/ Oh she echoes in my …" Suddenly there's a scream, muffled low in the mix and sounding like torture. Who is that? Yeule, who uses them/they pronouns, is such a Gen Z digital native it's hard to know if they would even exist without the internet. Born Nat Ćmiel and growing up within the shiny, expensive artifice of Singapore, they basically lived in the machine—more specifically, Tumblr and 4Chan and games like MapleStory. (The name Yeule is derived from that of a Final Fantasy character.) Interacting IRL meant trying on identities that might work in the sunlight: "I was a seapunk … " Yeule told Vice. "Then I transcended into health goth. And detergent core. Then I was on that Grimes aesthetic wave. And witch house." Musically, that meant absorbing Grimes, yes, but also Crystal Castles and Carole King—a diet that somehow translated as a mix of Asian post-pop, glitch and, with 2023's highly entertaining Softscars, '90s shoegaze and grunge.

For their fourth album, Yeule has called on an impressive roster of collaborators who help build on that framework and, thrillingly, sometimes color outside the lines. Produced with Mura Masa (PinkPantheress), who is all over this record, "Tequila Coma" rides a great groove spiked with knife-edge beats and flashes of white-hot guitar; there's a nifty trick where Yeule's vocals float as if suspended in mid-air, then slowly, slowly drop with gravity. "The Girl Who Sold Her Face"—produced by Chris Greatti (Poppy, Yungblud)—starts like acoustic bedroom pop, then shows itself as a rock monster complete with a wailing guitar solo and a cash-register sound effect. A.G. Cook's signature style is all over bustling "Saiko," which shimmers and honks and thumps and burps. Clams Casino shows up for epically dark "Skullcrusher" (which, at just about two minutes, leaves you wanting more). But you're here for the "cyborg entity" who is Yeule—the one who brought Broken Social Scene's "Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl" back to life once again, fueling a million TikToks and memes—and they do not disappoint. The singer plays it dreamy on lullaby "VV" and like a true pop star on "Dudu" and bouncy "What3vr." And they hit hard on the title track, which channels both rave and Twitch culture in its rapid-fire rhythm and big build, painting a vivid character study: "Nosebleed on the sunset strip/ He picks me up in a fast whip/ He laces up my leather boots/ He wears a blood-stained velvet suit." Is it real? Who knows. Just enjoy the ride.

TRACKLIST

1. yeule - Tequila Coma
2. yeule - The Girl Who Sold Her Face
3. yeule - Eko
4. yeule - 1967
5. yeule - VV
6. yeule - Dudu
7. yeule - What3vr
8. yeule - Saiko
9. yeule - Evangelic Girl is a Gun
10. yeule - Skullcrusher