A summer where pop stops playing safe
This summer’s wave of new releases from female pop artists is defined by bold genre-bending, as singers stretch house, experimental pop and electro into personal, emotionally charged territories that still feel unmistakably like pop. Rita Ora’s new single with Lance Savali, Slayyyter’s shimmering “brand new chanel$,” and Tove Lo’s sweaty electro-pop cut “DNH” form a loose trilogy about pleasure, chaos, and resilience, each one arriving from a different corner of the club. Together, they argue against the idea that pop must flatten itself to fit streaming playlists; instead, they treat house, movie-score drama, and drunk n’ horny nostalgia as raw material for distinct voices. If you care about where pop is heading next, you should be listening here, not to another anonymous algorithm-friendly hook.
Rita Ora and Lance Savali push house into pop’s center
The most overt house pop collaboration in this trio is “Higher,” Rita Ora’s new single with producer and DJ Lance Savali released through Casablanca Records. Savali, who already commands more than 1.8 million monthly listeners on Spotify and has racked up 60 million streams with earlier tracks, is not using Ora as a decorative feature; he builds the song around her. Her vocal sits at the center while his production pulses with bouncing percussion, melodic hooks, and a steady club beat that feels engineered for both dance floors and mainstream playlists. That tension is the point. “Higher” sounds like it was made by people who know each other well: Savali says he had Ora in mind from the earliest stage because of their longstanding friendship and family-like bond with her husband. It is a reminder that pop’s glossy surface can come from real relationships, not committee meetings.
This is also a statement of intent for Savali’s own career. Before stepping forward under his own name, he was a dancer and creative performing with megastars, and “Higher” is his first collaboration as a lead artist. That he chose Rita Ora for that moment says a lot about how both see house: not as a niche, but as a living language for pop. His upcoming show on July 31 at Elsewhere’s Zone One in Brooklyn is billed as a celebration of “Higher,” signaling that this isn’t a one-off experiment but the opening chapter of a larger club-first direction.
Slayyyter’s “brand new chanel$” turns heartbreak into experimental girl-pop
If “Higher” is about elevating house through star power, Slayyyter’s “brand new chanel$” is about cracking pop open from the inside. The song plays like the end credits to a film about her meteoric summer, bright and cinematic but tinged with sadness. It directly inverts her earlier single “BEAT UP CHANEL$,” part of a forthcoming sister project that reimagines and flips tracks from her major-label breakout debut. Where that track hammered with punk-ish verses and electroclash bite, “brand new chanel$” is all light: washed-out synths, live drums, and stacked ethereal chants that breathe millennial optimism into a story about being cheated on. There is an “absolutely huge and haunting synth line” in the chorus that feels almost Hans Zimmer-level in its emotional weight.
What makes this such confident girl-pop is the refusal to hide behind irony. Slayyyter sings with blunt clarity about discovering her partner brought someone else into her home while she was away, echoing an infidelity that she has discussed in interviews around a massive festival performance. The emotional whiplash—life exploding in public while crumbling in private—turns the song into a commentary on the cost of sudden fame as much as a breakup track. Meanwhile, she is busier than ever, with a sold-out tour, non-stop press, and that sister project in the works. Among female pop artists 2024, “brand new chanel$” stands out not because it is the loudest, but because it dares to sound like a triumphant montage while quietly documenting burnout.
Tove Lo’s “DNH” revives hedonistic electro-pop with a best-friend core
Tove Lo has always been pop’s patron saint of messy honesty, and her new electro-pop track “DNH” feels like both a throwback and a correction. Described as a “drunk n’ horny” bop with a hedonistic vibe, it focuses less on solo self-destruction and more on looking out for best friends over a wild night out. This is Tove Lo electro-pop in classic form: danceable yet emotionally specific, a soundtrack for people who still want to feel something in the club rather than drift through grayscale haze. The song is part of her forthcoming sixth album, ESTRUS, due in September on Pretty Swede Records/Virgin Music Group. She frames the album as primal, about mind and body wanting different things and everything at once, offering “no good advice… just a lot of feelings, no solutions”.
That framing matters because it refuses the self-help gloss that has crept into so much mainstream pop. While many artists have moved toward neat resolutions and empowerment slogans, “DNH” is content to sit in desire, contradiction, and the simple act of making sure your friends get home in one piece. In a culture that has felt “fairly DNR” in recent years, the shift to “DNH” reads as a low-stakes, high-sensation protest against giving up. Among female pop artists 2024, Tove Lo is still the one saying the quiet part out loud: you might not fix your life tonight, but you can dance through it—and call your friends back into the center of the story.
Three paths, one message: pop belongs to the risk-takers
Taken together, these three singles form a clear thesis: pop’s future belongs to women willing to treat genre as clay, not a cage. Rita Ora’s house pop collaboration with Lance Savali turns a DJ’s first major collab into a sleek, vocal-led club anthem. Slayyyter’s “brand new chanel$” turns experimental girl-pop into a diary about fame’s collateral damage. Tove Lo’s “DNH” drags electro-pop back to the sticky dance floor, framed by friendship and unfiltered desire. None of them abandon pop; they pull it in different directions and still sound unmistakably themselves. That is the real story here. While algorithms flatten taste, these artists double down on personality, history, and risk. If listeners reward that, this summer may be remembered not for background hits, but for three songs that proved female-led pop can be both accessible and unruly at the same time.
