The 26-year-old Vancouver native makes emotive music that’s already caught TikTok and the attention of Troye Sivan and KATSEYE.
Sophia Stel’s shifting, textural music owes its existence to three things: a synthesizer, digital drums, and guitar. But with just those three instruments, the 26-year-old Vancouver native constructs deep-well-sounding pop songs that’s more ready to communicate a feeling than any kind of message. On her latest single “Taste,” clouds of whirrs, twinkling bloops and a slacker beat make a wholesome breakup song that gets at a feeling of bittersweet gratitude for something that failed but happened anyway. It hits you square in the chest, even when you can’t make out her sleepy, Auto-Tuned vocals.
Raised in a family of 10 and an avid skater, Stel’s been making music all her life on piano and guitar though only recently is she gaining recognition from it. Around May, her last release “I’ll Take It,” which blurs her dreamy sound with higher bpm drums, courted a lightly viral moment on TikTok as it made the rounds and garnered reposts from artists like Troye Sivan and KATSEYE’s Megan Skiendiel. Capitalizing on the moment, she released “Taste,” the second single of her forthcoming EP How To Win At Solitaire, out September 5. “I notice with my music, it’s always pretty simple parts being layered,” she tells The FADER over a recent video call. “Simple things made to sound more complex.”
Ahead, hear “Taste” below, and read on for our conversation with Stel about producing all of her songs, making “soundtrack-y” music, and how Auto-Tune helps push her creatively.
You write and produce all of your music. What do you like about having control over the entire creative process?
Production is so essential to my writing process. Like, I’ll make like the keys part, and then I’ll write the first section of the song, and then when I get stuck I’ll add drums and then that will inform what comes next. It’s been the best writing tool. I tried to start working with other producers, but I really struggled to express my ideas to people and I also didn’t have a lot of confidence. I would go into a session and meet up with some guy that makes beats, and I wouldn’t like it, but I’d always be like, “Well, their idea is probably better than mine.” I don’t know if that’s part of the experience of being a woman or if that has more to do with my own lack of confidence. Eventually I was like, I just have to figure it out how to do it myself.
What sounds are you drawn to as a producer and songwriter?
My production is about trying to create something around the song that gets the feeling across in the best way. I noticed with my music, and it’s sort of soundtrack-y a lot of the time. I like a lot of pretty simple parts being layered, that’s always a big part of my production. Simple things made to sound more complex.
“Taste” is your latest single, from your next EP, How To Win At Solitaire. Tell me about writing it.
I made it in September. I broke up with my long-term girlfriend in the summer and I hadn’t been able to write about it. It takes me quite a long time to come around to how I feel about things. I made this whole project pretty much in this basement club that I was working in, and someone had left this really cool synth behind. It was my first time using it and basically all of the sounds on the song are from that synth. I found a few sounds on there and started looping them and I wrote the song over that, it just came together very naturally. [The] song really helped me with processing and feeling a lot more on my own.
Do you have a favorite lyric?
“So I think you’ll be OK in your fresh new Cartier frames.” My ex basically bought herself Cartier glasses, and I saw her for the first time after we’d broken up. She seemed to be doing so well and I think that was just like, it’s so nice when you have a relationship where you share a lot of love.
As you said, “Taste” is dreamy, as is the EP as a whole. Were you influenced or inspired by any music or other artists while you were creating this record?
It’s hard to say any specific one, but there’s some music that I found around that time that I definitely know affected me. One is this artist John Beltran, he’s kind of an iconic 2000s ambient house [artist]. I met him at [this] club we played at, and we’ve chatted quite a bit, but his music, I listen to it a lot, walking around, and I typically don’t listen to a lot of instrumental music. It builds really beautifully. The parts are somewhat simple again, but I feel like it’s very emotive. I think that had a big impact on me for sure. In general I listen to a lot of pop, like Flo Rida, older pop.
Auto-Tune is a tool you use in several of your songs. I’m not sure if you saw but recently, Charli xcx caught flack from people online for using it during a live performance. What are your thoughts on Auto-Tune and how do you use it artistically?
When I started recording my own voice a lot, I started using it, and I think a lot of that was [because] of a certain level of discomfort of having to listen to my own voice back constantly. And then, I started really getting into trying to use it more creatively. I think it does allow me to write melodies that maybe I wouldn’t have written otherwise, it pushes my voice in certain directions that I wouldn’t have thought of.
I don’t want things to be too perfect, but I also think that Auto-Tune doesn’t create that. You do have to be able to sing to a certain amount to use Auto-Tune. With someone like Charli, she’s a great singer without it as well. I think she’s used it to achieve this really unique sound, and I think that’s great. I try not to worry about [the criticism] too much. People will love Auto-Tune and then hate it and think it’s corny and then they’ll come back around. If you worry too much about it, then you’re not being true to yourself either.