April Harper Grey’s musical moniker, underscores, is a character that mutates as each album unravels. Next up: her unadulterated pop era.
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Do you ever hear a phrase that instantly catapults you into some long-forgotten memory? It happens to me as April Harper Grey attempts to explain the Pythagorean theorem, comparing the equation to her forthcoming third album, U, set for release on 20th March via Mom+Pop.
“It’s A squared plus B squared equals C squared. It’s the triangle!” she declares.
Maths animates her. It always has. For this record, though, the transfeminine artist vowed to “listen to my body” as much as her head. I’m trying to keep up with the theory, but mentally I’ve been transported to the far right corner of Mr Boyle’s GCSE classroom – a temperamental Scottish man who taught me maths with limited success. The girls said he had a nice bum. That, at least, was memorable. 25-year-old April is a far preferable teacher.
As we speak in the heart of January’s gloom, the producer, DJ and singer-songwriter is busy metamorphosing into a bona fide pop star. “I don’t think I’ve ever had Britney ambition,” she smirks. It’s early in Chicago, where the San Franciscan dials in from. Hood up, curtains closed, the occasional yawn proving contagious. Her screen is pixelated, as grainy as sand, which surprises me, given her discernible inclination to the digital world. Maybe it’s intentional. Maybe everything is.
“When I was younger, I wanted to be Skrillex or something. I wantedto be a DJ,” she says. “I started as a producer, and I think that’s the hallmark of my music.” Listening back to her early catalogue – the off-kilter electronics of “voice of reason” or “melodrama” – that checks out. But newcomers arriving via this third album cycle might be startled by such an admission.
The campaign opened with a summer sizzler shared in June’s swansong: “Music”, a loose homage to Madonna’s canonical namesake. The Material Girl was April’s “first favourite artist” when she was “five or whatever”. The track is all thumping synth bass and skittish percussion, her melodies glossy and glitch-filtered. It’s a flurry of illustrious, maximalist pop.
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November 2025’s “Do It”, a second glimpse at the forthcoming LP, took April’s budding pop-fanaticism to a new acme. The choreography-heavy video would make Britney herself proud. Sonically, it borrows from K-pop and hyper-pop – amplified by January’s remix with Korean rising star Yves – fusing crowd-pleasing sheen with something sharper and more knowingly sexual. She interrogates her subject’s finances, their car, and if they like rough sex, before dismissing them entirely: she’s married to the music. For 25-year-old April, it reads as more than a sonic pivot, but a playful flex of sexuality and self-possession.
From the early SoundCloud-era electronic productions to the raw indie experimentation of her 2021 debut record fishmonger, to her second full-length, Wallsocket, a complex and challenging concept album, galvanic and restless jumps in April’s artistic core are nothing new. Much of this coming album’s shift in style lies in a stripping back of her creative process – embodied by the short, sharp song titles, and the use of a singular letter as the album’s title. “I liked the idea of doing a self-titled [project], but I don’t know if I’d call an album ‘underscores’,” she explains. “But I got obsessed with the idea of calling itU.”
The work is a trimming of musical indulgence and a decluttering of technical complication. It’s made in its entirety by April alone – from the writing to the production to the mixing and mastering. Because “my biggest tenet right now is to do it myself even if it’s a worse product. Like – this is as much from mybrain as it could be. If people don’t like my voice or they don’t like the production or the videos, at least it was all from me. At least I was being earnest.”
Much of the work was written nomadically, as she toured with DJ/producer Porter Robinson in the spring and during a stint supporting her mercurial collaborator Danny Brown at the backend of 2025. “Usually if I’mon the road, I don’t make music at all. I just wait until I get home to make everything,” she says. “But there’ve been many times where I didn’t know why I wasn’t just making music on the road. My setup has gotten way simpler: I reverted back to a [Focusrite] Scarlett interface and an SM7B [microphone] instead of anything too fancy, just because it’s easy to bring around and it’s rugged. It’ll survive in my backpack.”
A group of songs that she’s proud of but now feels difficult to revisit, April’s previous album Wallsocket is a dark and daring descent into the crevices of middle America. It was made in a “pretty good time” in her life, but “when things get good, that’s when philosophical thoughts start creeping in. You start asking, ‘Why am I here?’” U flips this instinct. Written against a more anxious world, it rejects the idea that profundity must equal heaviness. There’s power in lightness. In pleasure. In escape.
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“Art has served different purposes for me over my life,” April says. “But there are certain times when people really want to escape into something and be out of the world for a minute. And I definitely feel that right now. On [Wallsocket], I wanted to reckon with the world through art. Whereas with [U], there feels like a need to step into something nice to be in, and that doesn’t make you feel bad about existing in the world. You don’t have to always ask these big questions; sometimes you just want something nice to put on.”
April’s soon-to-be-shared third album completes a trifecta tapestry of taste and influence that feels wholeheartedly unique in tone and approach. To listeners, the trilogy forms a shapeshifting tapestry. To her, they’re branches of the same tree. “Each project has a different sound, world, geographical location or architecture,” she murmurs, as if thinking aloud. “But I don’t know, for me it almost feels like I’m kind of making the same album every time. Taking another crack at the same thing and getting closer.”
Closer to what?
“I don’t know,” she contemplates. “Some kind of perfect package.” The search for artistic enlightenment is endless, and for April, defining her own version of pop stardom is the current driving force. Making music that’sboth inspired and inspiring is one thing, but bigger forces are at play. Mr Boyle, for instance. Aqua Dots, too – small plastic beads she once ate as a child and survived to tell the tale. But mainly, eyebrows.
“I wish more people would ask about my eyebrows,” she sighs.
Really? Why?
“Because I want to make a statement. We’re in a thin eyebrow – or no eyebrow–apocalypse. These,” she gestures to her thick, dark brows, “need to come back.”
You heard it here first. Vive la révolution!
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Photography by Brendan Wixted
Styling by Natasha Bocha
Words by Ben Tibbits
Hair by Sergio Estrada at PARADIS
Make-up by Shaena Baddour at PARADIS
Fashion Assistant Vera Mezentseva
Videography by Mylo Butler