I’m so not the target audience for Canadian hyperpop singer 8485, but this song is such an earworm I can’t resist it.

It’s a collaboration with Detroit rapper (and actor, and podcaster) Danny Brown, but really it’s her own contribution that stands out – especially in this inventive video.

So who is 8485? I’m not sure we know, beyond the fact that she is also known s ‘Eighty’ and occasionally, as Cat Trevingt (say it in a French accent).

She started out in a “digicore and glitchcore collective” called Helix Tears, alongside some equally strangely-named collaborators (blackwinterwells, drainpuppet, twikipedia, quinn, quannnic, midwxst) and made a minor impact in 2021 with a rather lovely song called Hangar.

Of course I’ve never heard of digicore or glitchcore, which the internet tells me are microgenres of hip-hop popularised by teenagers in bedrooms in the 2010s, featuring beats derived from trap, high-pitched heavily processed vocals, and glitchy production featuring sudden skips and audio breaks.

Thankfully Ms 8485 doesn’t sound like that, but does make interesting electronic music that seems entirely original to my jaded ears. Three years ago she sounded very different, as on this tune:

Now she has a new single out, called Buzzbands, all about the cult of cultural relevance that afflicts many young people today, a subject she continues to explore in her eternally shapeshifting repertoire.

I think she is what you might call a digital disrupter. But at heart she is a pop singer, and that’s good enough for me.