On her debut Shedding Velvet Nymphlord treats pop culture detritus the way some songwriters treat folklore. These songs rattle with brand names, cubicles, linktrees, and Bush-era memories, but what might read as cheap irony lands instead as something rawer: a portrait of identity assembled from scraps, awkward moments recycled into something divine. It’s an album obsessed with the way we perform authenticity — on stage, online, in the fluorescent half-light of an office all-hands — and the quiet fear that all we’re left with at the end of the scroll is emptiness.

On Shedding Velvet, Nymphlord presents a portrait of identity in process, velvet peeled back to show the bone. Angsty, ethereal, hopeful, and dissonant, this one of a kind debut is not one to be missed.