While we ache for people to open their lungs up and let all the air out of their body a little more, it’d be disingenuous to say that we aren’t partial to the hushed and delicate vocals that are very much du jour in the current climate. It seems the Cocteau Twins and shoegaze influences aren’t going anywhere, any time soon.

So with that, we go to one of the more interesting performers who kinda fall into that category – Leicester’s SOFY, and the newly released album ‘How To Perform Magic’.

Broadly speaking, there’s a lot of good influence in the grooves on this album – you’ll hear the twitchy paranoia of Massive Attack, the twang of road music music, skuzzy tape effects, the Komische basslines of The Cure, C86 jangles, but also, the breathy pop of say, Billie Eilish too.

However, what really grabs your attention is the utterly fabulous Italo piano chugger ’50/50′ which somehow manages to sound like it has one foot in 1989, while being absolutely zeitgeisty 2026. There’s a baggy shuffle, a Balearic pop lightness of touch, married with a big uplifting piano, with Sofy’s bedroom pop back-and-forth vocals.

It’s absolutely magic, and alone, feels like it should propel SOFY into large spaces all by itself.

There’s more good stuff to be had too, obviously – album opener ’40 Minute Masterpiece’ is an atmospheric gem that which swerves between ’80s dreampop and the enjoyable unease found in Trip Hop, and rather than sounding like some upstart cribbing classy notes from elsewhere, it absolutely suits SOFY down to the ground,

In ‘Wishbone’, ‘Jealousy’s A Fever’, and ‘Superfriend’, you’re treated to the echoes of New Order’s nervy take on rock music, remembering that austere music still needs an injection of uplift, which many copycats tend to forget.

See, for all the minor keys, spiralling and claustrophobic sound clashes, SOFY never takes her eye off a good pop song, which makes for a hugely affecting album – it’s emotional, stirring, never beaten and uplifting. Even in the more gloomy moments, the beats are still chunky enough to make you want to move, never allowing a song to completely fold into itself.

‘DooYaa’ is a propulsive melding of post-punk and alt-pop, to pair perfectly with the trippy slo-mo ‘Nintendogs’, with SOFY’s voice ducking and diving, in-and-out of the walls of ethereal noise.

As debut albums go, it’s as complete and realised as anything you’ve heard, and SOFY is possessed it seems, by a very surefooted sense of what she wants to put out into the world, and that really shows on this record.

This is a very, very cool album and we should be excited to see what SOFY has up her sleeve for the future.