No matter what music Australian artist Mallrat throws at us, the electro-pop musician seems to be creating intentionally. Mallrat typically uses monotone repetition to build around her soft voice and create soothing, sentimental bedroom pop songs. She often pairs her light and airy synthesized voice with bold, masculine ad libs from hip-hop acts that perfectly compliment each other. Her innovative techniques of blending electro-pop and hip-hop has landed her over 1.5 million monthly listeners and placements on mega-playlists like “All New Indie” and the elusive “Lorem.”  

With Mallrat’s new single “Teeth”, we see the artist get spookier and edgier than we’ve ever seen her. Vying away from her more upbeat, mellow hits, “Teeth” has vague lyrics and sharp sounds. It heavily employs her echoing, synthetically altered voice, grand riffs of electric guitar, and best of all- cowbell. Mallrat reaches into her lower registers to mumble the ominous lyrics, “It’s in the air that I breathe / Understand it’s up my sleeve, It’s in my hair, in my sleep / With my hands, in my teeth'' while the cowbell tings away in the background.

The cowbell is an uncommonly used percussion in pop, and Mallrat uses its hollow, high-pitched ping to punctuate the other instrumentals that are running together. Mallrat has once again struck a perfect sonic balance between the highs and lows, and although her music comes in many flavors, the balancing act seems to remain the same. As to what the subject of the song is, that’s anyone's guess- maybe her demons?

Mallrat has previously released “Rockstar” and “Your Love”, two punchy yet dark singles that merge the themes of “angel choirs and monster trucks”. The songs have an emo-grunge sound that we have yet to hear from the Brisbane singer. Even the cover art for the singles seems to have aspects of angelic goth, from the scratchy emo writing to the comic, floating bunnies in a pink sky. “Teeth” feels like a strange precursor to a grungier, darker version of Mallrat as she anticipates the release of her next record, Butterfly Blue, coming out May 15th.

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