WET LEG — POKEMON

There is some joy in Wet Leg titling this song 'pokemon' (or should I say Nurse Joy, right?). Mostly because, when 'Chaise Longue' popped into this material plane back in 2022, I never clocked them for a band that'd name a song after this mega-franchise. But that's just a small joy.

Lyrically, the 'pokemon' weaves a low-key less on-the-run Thelma and Louise love story. "Oh, to be yours, to be driving away..." sings frontwoman Rhian Teasdale, painting a poetic picture with cute couplets like

But nothing hits like you and me
"I love you, " I say casually

and

You taste so sweet, like grenadine
You are my favourite human being

There are a couple of references to partying, what with the grenadine (above) and getting "another round". Starting the song with "Get lost, get loose..." feels like an echo of famed rock hedonist Jim Morrison, who utters the words "Get loose!" in the intro for 'Changeling', the first track on L.A. Woman (1971), his final album with The Doors.

A more obscure reference can be found: "Giddy up, you want to go faster? / Call me the demon headmaster" — quite a throwback to a British TV series from the '90s called The Demon Headmaster (it was about a headmaster who was a demon). It is followed by the line that names the song (and another '90s reference): "You just gotta choose me, baby, yeah, I'll be your Pokémon."

Showing how far the Teasdale (and the band) has come, the chorus features a line about driving from Isle of Wight to Tokyo, which is really quite a long way culturally, population-wise, and geographically. Ultimately, it's a driving song, a mood evoked not only through the road-tripping lyrics but in the galloping rhythm of the track, the gleaming guitars like a half-setting sun glinting on the metallics of a car.

The video for the 'pokemon' basically illustrates the thoughts and feelings evoked within the song, except in place of another human being it's about a woman who's in a relationship with a giant egg. Which, incidentally, makes it feel a lot more Tamagotchi-coded than Pokémon related.

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• 🔔 The video for 'pokemon' by Wet Leg was directed by Elliott Arndt (from the band Faux Real, who often support Wet Leg on tour). The woman in the relationship with the giant egg is played by Alice Longyu Gao, who is a DJ, producer and all-round artist in her own right.
• 🔔 'pokemon' is, of course, taken from Wet Leg's much-anticipated second album moisturizer, which was released in July 2025 via Domino. You may stream the album, purchase it in vinyl form or digitally by heading over to Bandcamp.

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☟ Wet Leg Internet Presence ☟
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🐣 CURXES — THE STARS, LIKE DUST

This is the tightrope walk between nostalgia and a sort of despairing doom, the warmth of uncovering objects entangled with happy feelings yet in the miasmic embrace of the baleful knowledge that it is but a fleeting glimpse into the past; this is 'The Stars, Like Dust' by UK musicmaker Curxes, where the synths skew and fizz with something memorial, the beat – dusty, sharp, abrasive – ticks and stutters with mechanical stamina, where the bass bulges in ominous waves.

Formerly a trio, the now solo Curxes (aka real human Roberta Fidora) herself spoke to us via email to explain the track, which she admitted she wanted to sound "somewhere between ocean and space organ waves." And there is that sense of organic vs. synthetic broiling in the almost living-and-breathing irregularity with how the synths dip and peak minutely but remain zingy and metallic.

The lyrics are desperately alive, calling from this pocket of bright, submerged flavours, this whirling and swirling of sound—the words feel like they've arrived via signals that are lightyears away, rebounding and crackly, crooning with nonchalant distress about "an age of infinite dread."

"The lyrics were written at a period when I felt that the entire country was going through a transitional phase and not for the better, fuelled by misplaced nostalgia," explains Fidora. "I think many of us have our own nostalgia to deal with, but generally it isn't anything that has the ability to distort or disrupt people's lives." And so 'The Stars, Like Dust' is a cocktail of that childhood yearning for the stars and that deathly, adult fear of what we might find there; the reluctant progression of vast swathes of humanity.

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• 🔔 Curxes tells us a bit more about the creation of the eccentrically British visuals for 'The Stars, Like Dust' - complete with triangle sandwiches, a chihuahua, and reclusive behaviour.

  "I worked with portrait photographer and 50s sci-fi enthusiast Rob Luckins to make a video based on our collective love of space travel, which seems to be undergoing a resurgence, maybe because it gives people the hope that they can escape the things to which they don't belong."

• 🔔 This song is taken from the 2017 Curxes album Gilded Cage.

• 🔔 You may stream and purchase 'The Stars, Like Dust' via Bandcamp.

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facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ spotify ⚘ youtube ⚘ instagram ⚘ songkick ⚘ hype machine

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