Pop Goes The World: Meet Little Nikki, Tove Lo, Suvi, Laurel & Lorde

Sam Lansky | April 29, 2013 1:54 pm

Laurel — “Blue Blood”

There’s no way that English singer-songwriter Laurel can release a song and video like “Blue Blood” without inviting comparisons to Lana Del Rey, and that’s fine — they’re certainly earned — but there’s a quality to Laurel’s voice that’s emotive in a way that Del Rey can rarely push through the affect to crack, and the spare production (by Laurel herself) isn’t as bombastic as her contemporary. In the demo for “Blue Blood,” for which Laurel just premiered a video, she sounds less girlish and more tortured, and the sinister strings and trippy vocal effects create a mood that’s hard (impossible) to ignore. There’s star wattage here, for sure.