By Mark Savage, music correspondent
Last August, PinkPantheress cancelled all her remaining tour dates – including lucrative support slots with Coldplay and Olivia Rodrigo – to concentrate on her health. “I’ve reached a wall which I am struggling to penetrate through,” she said in a statement to fans.
But she’s put the downtime to good use. The 23-year-old’s new mixtape, Fancy That, is accessible, hypnotic and seductive alt-pop.
She’s been teasing the project since January, when she posted photos from her home studio, captioned: “oh we are soooo back #2025.” Speaking to Mixmag, she said listening to Fatboy Slim and Groove Armada had inspired “the size of the music”.
But it’s another dance band whose DNA is sprinkled all over the EP. Basement Jaxx get writing credits on four of the nine tracks, with PinkPantheress sampling classic 2000s dance hits like Romeo and Good Luck. Elsewhere, she chops in samples of the music she was raised on, from Sugababes to Underworld.
In a recent Reddit thread, external, PinkPantheress said the mixtape represented a “more fun” side to her personality than the introspective, “emo asf” lyrics of her debut album Heaven Knows.
She certainly seems to be having a blast on party-centric club cuts Tonight and Illegal (sample lyric: “Is this illegal? It feels illegal”); while Stateside giddily documents a transatlantic love affair.
It’s all over in about 20 minutes – but what a rush.
