The Brazilian-born, Amsterdam-based producer’s new mixtape presents shapeshifting, pop-minded club tracks that showcase her dense production and versatile singing.
Born in Brazil and based in the Netherlands, Lyzza got her start as a teenager, playing around with production software and uploading songs to SoundCloud while DJing ballroom sets around Amsterdam. She introduced her style of metallic electronic pop on an enigmatic trio of EPs that progressively brought her voice to the fore. Lyzza’s blasé flow and kinetic production style—jumping between rapid BPMs with a deep bass undertow pulling beneath—are confident and enticing, capable of stirring up delirium on the dancefloor before retreating into a more pensive comedown. On her new mixtape Mosquito, Lyzza presents a series of shapeshifting, pop-minded club tracks that constitute her most cohesive project yet. It includes some of her most approachable songs, yet they retain all the thrills of her dense production, here used in service of headstrong lyrics colored by a tumultuous love life.
The music on Mosquito often sounds on the brink of collapse. Lyzza’s avant-pop impulses cut a sharp figure, with winding intros that build toward accelerating tempos, crunching synths, and lyrics that dart between English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The smoldering highlight “Cheat Code” quakes with resounding handclaps, giving shuffling footing to Lyzza’s coolly delivered vocals about the mental anguish of wanting to end a relationship: “No quiero un amor que no tiene cualidad,” she sings emphatically, driving home a growing sense of self-worth. On the reggaeton-tinged “Deserve It,” she recruits Spanish rapper La Zowi, who provides a flexing, rapid-fire verse over Lyzza’s mutating synth line and sticky-sweet beat. Along with the in-your-face “Blush Me Out!” and loping “Ressaca,” they’re among Lyzza’s best tracks, with a forward sense of pounding rhythm and dynamic, shit-talking personality.
Though Mosquito ably conveys the artist’s compelling persona, some songs on the mixtape tread water. “Mind 2 Lips” charges forward with a thudding drum pattern and zipping synths that never reach any real climax, content to simmer in the background instead. “Eraser” loops and chops up stabs of electric guitar into a foregrounded melody, a wrinkle that becomes more grating the longer the song goes on. Lyzza is proficient at creating a hook that sticks with you—the hypnotic, Rihanna-esque chorus of “Blush Me Out!” is indelible—but her competing, distorted production tricks threaten to submerge the mixtape’s better ideas.
Still, Lyzza’s flexible, airy vocals keep things on track as Mosquito threads together her growing sense of authority. She slips between a feathery coo and martial shouts on the choppy, 8-bit-streaked “For When I Fall Again,” which imparts a biting assertion of agency. Later, on the highlight “Heathens Call,” she and Canadian-Zambian firebrand rapper Backxwash dial into a particularly vivid, boastful sweet spot. “Cut through, cutthroat/Can’t tell no more,” Lyzza attests in singsong over head-knocking percussion and echoing synths, ensuring every ounce of tenacity shows.
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