I first featured the music of singer-songwriter Sylva Faye at the start of 2025, and was enchanted by her second album release, Sunday Forever.
By Graeme Smith
The album blended folk and pop expertly, but I detected a hidden depth too, delighting in the album’s “clever use of instruments” and describing it as “folk music that breaks the mould.” Despite those early hints at Faye doing something different, I wasn’t quite prepared for the level of experimentation we hear in her new EP, CRACKED.
Faye’s new record sees her branching out in terms of genre, layering on electronica to her folk and pop roots. The style change is a deliberate choice and hits us with the unexpected before returning us to territory we’re more familiar with. As such it doesn’t overwhelm but strikes a chord.
As a fan of Hannah Diamond, I loved the early moments like WRAITHSONG and Free (P34CH20.) In them, Faye channels a similar quirky, emotive style, delivering confessional lyrics devastatingly through soft, expressive vocals and subtle distortion. It’s a similar kind of minimal hyperpop (if that’s not too much of a contradiction.) It’s clear that the genre switch isn’t being used as a gimmick. It enhances the feelings of the tracks in a way that only hyperpop can.
The lyrics drip of nostalgia and grief. Faye wrote the EP in a period following a false arrest and the loss of her mother and you hear that emotional backdrop. Through the record, she uses creativity as resistance against injustice, making memory, mourning, and resilience recurring themes.
After the early electronica, title track Cracked strips things back for an acoustic folk moment, giving its dark, visceral lyrics get plenty of space. Another favourite artist of mine is Joanna Newsom and her offbeat, storytelling style was recalled here. Blooms lightens things with a unexpected groove without losing any of the gravity before LHF. ends things lushly with fantasy fuelled lyrics and an instrumental full of folksiness.
It’s breath-taking how Faye has been able to go so easily between modern edge and reassuring classicality across these five tracks. It really is a project that needs to be heard.
If you want to keep up to date with all she’s doing, you can by following her on Instagram and TikTok.
CRACKED was recorded at Clarence Street Studios in Leicester and features ten instruments all played by Faye herself. It’s out now and you can listen to it below.