Erin LeCount is the latest exciting voice in alt-pop
‘I’m grateful for all those years of not seeing tangible results,” says the alt-pop star, who has slowly built a dream world of boundary-pushing pop music from the ground up
By Bea Isaacson
Curled up on a sofa in a flowing white skirt, the warm and witty Erin LeCount is being rather modest as we discuss the thrilling accelera-tion of her career. Over the past year, the Essex-raised singer, songwriter and self-producer has built a loyal online fanbase after ex-ploding beyond the British alt-pop scene with 2025’s viral single ‘Silver Spoon’. She’s recently completed her first headline tour in the USA, which was so in demand the singer-songwriter had to add extra dates; her third EP, the haunting baroque-pop PAREIDOLIA, was released just this February, and has already racked up millions of Spotify streams.
This leap from a bedroom alt-pop musician to a bona fide touring artist is a trajectory that awes LeCount but doesn’t unsettle her. “I’m really grateful for all those years of not seeing many tangible big results,” she says. “I really disassociated from numbers and streams. I think the only time it feels really real is when I’m in front of people. That’s when I go, ‘Holy shit. This is different to when I was working in a shop a year ago.’”
With long blonde hair and eyes outlined in black kohl, LeCount looks as ethereal as the music she makes, sounds she doubles down on in the sonically striking PAREIDOLIA. The record, named after the psychological phenomenon in which the brain imposes meaning onto chaos, is wonderfully maximalist, fusing together vintage synth textures with futuristic electronic details that complement her ghostly vocals. It’s a tight, hypnotic record that confidently reflects her rich inner world, deservingly placing her within the lineage of the likes of Kate Bush and Florence Welch, and across the horizon of FKA twigs and Ethel Cain.
Her music is just as immersive lyrically. “I write constantly,” says LeCount. “Whether it’s journals or diaries, for better or worse, I’m really quite brutally honest in what I write down, just because that’s how I figure my whole life out.”
She continues, “The joys of being able to produce is I get to sit at the computer and completely choose the world. It’s having control of that soundscape that makes such a difference to how honestly I’m able to write.”
LeCount may feel like the oldest 23-year-old in the world, but her internet-born story is typical of her generation. At the age of 17, when her school friends were preparing for university, “I got into making things on Garage Band [during the] Covid [period],” she says. “And started writing songs and sharing them during Covid, and that was what led me to production.”
Six years and a sold-out tour later, LeCount is balancing the landscape she started in with the world opening up beyond it. She’s currently “in the throes” of writing her first album, splitting her time between London and New York.
“It’s a very special place to be making an album,” she continues. “I’m between my garden shed and New York.” Like the electric dynamism of her spectral sound, it is “two worlds apart but blending”.