Brand new album from Annika Zee

Over the years, Toronto-born artist Annika Zee has earned a reputation as a pioneering creative figure whose work flows across music, design and visual media. With a background in both experimental production and classical songwriting, she’s developed a sonic output that blurs the line between analogue warmth and futuristic soundscapes.

Having studied at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music in New York and now continuing her practice in printmaking and publications at OCAD University, Annika is a true multimedia visionary. Her multidisciplinary approach has informed her music as well as guided collaborations in fashion, television and cultural institutions, with her compositions appearing in projects for Broad City, American Eagle and Anna Sui.

Capturing her sound in the studio for almost a decade, she first unveiled her highly original sonic vision in 2016 with the debut EP Aging Aesthetics. Returning in 2019 with her first full-length album Factory Pageant, she’s since released multiple well-received EPs and records over the years. With her fourth record Magnolia in 2024, released via Absurd Trax, she took her sound global, partially recording in London with Will Smith at Jamie xx’s Octave Studio.

Winning over fans and tastemakers alike, she’s been going from strength to strength with her unique and truly engaging sound. Now she returns with what may be her most emphatic artistic statement yet, bringing us her brand new record titled Emerald Spy, a conceptual work that refreames pop and electronic music in her own way. Drawing on 90s pop nostalgia, ambient electronica and abstract lyrical storytelling, Annika builds an engrossing sonic world that examines the intersections of technology, race and identity in the digital age.

Ultimately, Emerald Spy embraces the contradiction, offering dreamy textures that sit alongside biting critiques and personal storytelling that’s stitched into collective calls for resistance and reimagination. The seven-track set opens with “Hell No,” a fierce rejection of dystopian futures and the systems that enable them, setting up for a record based in defiance.

“Can’t Hear You” follows as a critique of conflict, celebrity culture and the overwhelming saturation of social media, a track that feels at once cutting edge and timeless in its rejection of staying silent. The mood shifts with “Wondering,” which offers an almost utopian vision of a different kind of future, its optimism providing a necessary counterbalance captured in a grooving alternative pop setting.

Annika’s pen grows sharper with “I’m Dead,” taking on themes of identity, toxic love and stereotyping with uncompromising conviction, while “Can You,” crafted with Will Smith in London, ventures into surreal, improvisational areas while examining power dynamics in both personal and systemic contexts. Inspired by Malcolm X, “Puppet” takes aim at systemic oppression, wrapped up in a hazy slice of atmospheric avant pop.

The album closes with “As They Call,” a haunting reflection on colonial legacy that insists on the necessity of reparations, leaving the listener with both unease and resolve. Commenting on the record, she shares, “This album connects people across socio-economic and cultural boundaries. It’s about challenging imposed systems while also celebrating the beauty of imagination, resilience, and multiplicity.”

Listen to Emerald Spy below