iKeda is ready to spill
Sounds like: Effervescent bops with bite Soundtrack for: A lost-in-music stomp through the city File next to: Babymorocco, PinkPantheress, Cece Natalie, Ms* Gloom Our favourite song: RED RED Where to find her: @sweetlikekeda
With a run of dates supporting PinkPantheress next month and a new EP on the way, London singer and art girl iKeda is locking in to her pop star persona.
“I’m obsessed with the word ‘effervescent’ at the moment,” iKeda says softly. A flicker of spring sunlight catches the sequins on her top as she speaks, scattering light across her walls and onto the screen between us.
It’s a fitting image for an artist re-coding electro-pop energy for a bang-up-to-date, sticky-floored UK club crowd. You can hear it in tracks like Ocean Nights (Like Everyday), iKeda’s first solo single from 2024, which opens with her coyly ordering a spicy marg (though she’s more of a Hugo fan these days), or the earworm-y bop Luv drunk. This is music for – and from – that moment: the point in a night where you’re letting go and feeling yourself, but still in control… just about, anyway. But that teeter is precisely where the fun’s at. “Just like the bubbles before it spills over,” she grins.
The latter track closed her debut EP Pretty Little Problem, whose magazine cut- out-style artwork was a wink to her “favourite songwriter ever”, Lily Allen. She shares that same affinity for Allen with former Crack cover star PinkPantheress – now a tour mate of iKeda’s and a mate more generally. The pair bookended a Victory Lap cypher (yes, the one with the cat) last year, before iKeda went on to open for PinkPantheress at a packed-out O2 Academy Brixton. She’ll be supporting once more this spring for a run of dates across the UK and Europe, including a milestone stop at Alexandra Palace.
She’s excited to be back out there, building confidence, dancing, visiting new cities, meeting new fans – something she got a taste of in Brixton. “There were so many people coming up and being so lovely,” she recalls. Some were a touch younger, admittedly, which was slightly daunting, she says, “because I can be a little risqué!”
But iKeda was once that same open-minded, music-hungry kid, too, growing up between north London and Cambridge, picking up influences from everywhere: a “music head” mum tapped into club culture; an older sister “into loads of different” things; friends from both cities with disparate leanings – indie on the one side, dancehall and garage on the other; and the radio. An accumulation of all sorts – probably why she finds it tricky to describe her sound, her reference points as scattered as the light still bouncing around her room.
A love for creating with those closest to her, though, is far easier to pin down. She got an early start singing at home with her younger sister, while DJing – mainly at little clubs with her friends – came later. A decade-long bond with musician and performance artist Babymorocco has stretched between life stages. “He’s like my brother,” says iKeda, whose previous releases have been supported by his PhatBoy collective, with other link-ups and appearances dotted about. “There are lots of things people haven’t seen,” she admits. “We’ve done a podcast together. We’ve done a comic together…”
For iKeda, a self-confessed art girl and “very contextual person”, the visual side of what she puts out is a forever focus. She wants to inspire. Make things that last. Be it illustrations for comics or high-drama videos like the one for RED RED (another close-friend collaboration, with photographer and director Erika Kamano, that saw Lady Gaga’s Telephone tacked firmly to the moodboard). Especially now, with a brand-new EP just around the corner.
In typical iKeda fashion, her forthcoming release, Bangs N Braces, is inspired by just about everything: children’s books (see: The Tiger Who Came to Tea), love triangles, Find My Friends-assisted cat-and- mouse games. Plus Major Lazer on the sonic tip – and, erm, cockroaches, at least in the case of Go, a track about dancing but also survival of sorts. Hence the bug comparison. “I know it’s like the worst way to describe yourself,” she laughs. “But me and my friends always say we’re like cockroaches!”
It’s the exact song she’s always wanted to make. And it’ll feel even sweeter to see how it – and the EP at large – lands live. “I feel like I’ve really stamped out my identity,” she smiles. “People are going to be like… they’re just going to see me.”
RED RED is out now
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