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Slayyyter embraces the filthy, glamourous, Y2K-era electroclash soundtrack of her teenage years on her third album, 2026's WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA. Having emerged from SoundCloud obscurity with her early mixtape and gained club buzz with 2021's Troubled Paradise, the St. Louis-bred, Los Angeles-based singer continued to hone her sound, merging her unabashed 2000s pop influences with a sleek, '80s-inspired synth style on 2023's Starfucker; culminating in her cracking the Top Ten of Billboard's Dance Albums chart. If those albums found her fusing the classic Britney Spears teen R&B sound with the wry, in-your-face swagger of Kesha, she takes it a step further on WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA. Collaborating primarily with producers Austin Corona and Wyatt Bernard, among several others, Slayyyter digs into a punky, dance club atmosphere, crafting a gloriously regressive and unabashed electroclash album. From the start, there's a feeling that she is reaching back into her past and ruminating on her coming-of-age in the mid-2000s and 2010s. Perhaps she felt like an outsider, perhaps she dated the wrong guys; no matter, there was the internet and bands like Justice and the Gossip and MGMT (all stylistic touchstones here) to keep her sane. It's a vibe she conjures from the start, first with "Dance...," a hypnotic banger built on a sinister NIN-esque synth-bass groove that feels like a hedonistic call to arms. A raw, red-eyed, late-night energy also marks "Beat Up Chanel$," where she details her state-of-mind, singing "I wanna dye my hair every pretty shade of pastel/I want nasty afterparties, banged up at the motel/I want beat-up Chanels, I want something for real." While the first half of the album certainly leans heavily into an over-driving synth and blown-out microphone speaker aesthetic, there are plenty of hooky, melodic moments to follow, as in shimmering, Ray of Light-era Madonna-isms of "Gas Station," the Blondie-esque "Unknown Loverz," and the Robyn-like "Old Fling$" with its rising EDM chorus. While Slayyyter certainly cribs from many of her dance influences on WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA, she never fails to make them her own; a process that often invokes that famous quote about how good artists borrow, but great artist's steal. It's a sentiment she underscores on "Old Technology," cooing over a buzzy rubberband synth and whipcrack beat, she sings "You heard the song straight, straight off my iPod/Straight off the Tumblr blog/I am a God, yes, sir."

A1        Dance…
A2        Beat Up Chanel$
A3        Cannibalism!
A4        Old Technology
A5        Crank
A6        Gas Station
A7        Yes Goddd
B8        Unknown Loverz
B9        Old Fling$
B10        I’m Actually Kinda Famous
B11        $t. Loser
B12        What Is It Like, To Be Liked?
B13        *Prayer*
B14        Brittany Murphy.