DJ Suzy Builds Her Debut Album Around an Alter Ego

DJ Suzy has spent two releases circling a version of herself. The Swedish artist’s 2023 EP I’m Still Changing and 2024 mixtape Haunted Disc established a digital, synth-driven alt-R&B, then pulled back from it at intervals into sparser acoustic arrangements. Her debut album Kira Krash resolves that tension by refusing to resolve it. The record gives substantial space to an alter ego, named in the title and shown on the cover holding hands with Suzy herself, described in the album’s press materials as more impulsive and less restrained than her author. That gap becomes the subject.

What follows is a character study about self-control in romance, dressed in club-ready production and 2000s internet nostalgia. The glittering, beat-heavy opener “Why Did I Say I Loved You?” sets up the argument, and the record spends the rest of its runtime taking both sides of it. “Dream” is chirpy dance-pop about failing to move past a relationship. “I Want You to Leave” asks for the opposite. “Sw33t” is openly lovestruck. “Blue Hour” drops to acoustic guitar and a partner described as permanently bound to her. On the title track, Suzy addresses the character directly and asks to be more like her.

The comparisons to Erika de Casier, Oklou and PinkPantheress are reasonable, given the shared instinct for refurbishing pop’s past. But the organizing idea here is the doubling: the ambivalence is structural, not just a lyrical mood, and the hooks are what carry it. Whether the nerve belongs to Suzy or to Kira Krash is never settled, which seems to be the intention.