Tessa Rae is a Digital Girl living in a digital world

There’s a cold irony to Tessa Rae‘s new single ‘Digital Girl.’ A twisted tale of twenty-first-century loneliness and isolation, the track is an icy takedown of ‘sad girl’ stereotypes and online objectification told with haunting detachment. Over a frigid instrumental Rae sings from the perspective of a cybernetic siren, emploring the listener to watch her on their phone and ‘make a home of endless chords and silicone’. Punctuated with robotic vocal samples and the odd telephone noise, the track revolves around a hypnotic chorus, Rae singing ‘In a digital world, I’ll be your digital girl’, the melody falling on the last world, calling to mind the sound of a crashing computer. The follow-up to Rae’s breakout hit ‘Seventeen’, ‘Digital Girl’ introduces her as a singer that’s part Lana Del Rey, part PC Music.

Speaking about the track Tessa Rae said “I’ve had the concept of Digital Girl in my mind for a while now. It started as an Instagram caption to be honest. I would call myself a Digital Girl. To anyone who finds me online, I’m just a girl on a screen or a voice in their speakers. I had this image of a girl trapped in a box, half real, half digital. I was in a session a few months ago. When my producer left to get some food I got bored, so I picked up his guitar and started writing Digital Girl. When he got back, he loved the concept. I didn’t really know where it was gonna go, but it turned into this post-apocalyptic video game fantasy, where the digital age had taken over and humanity had failed us. We’re losing our innate ability to connect with one another and we wanted this song to portray that.” Listen to ‘Digital Girl’ below.