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Photo by Mikaela Kautzky

Imagine you name your debut album the greatest album of all time, funny right? It might come off as either the most arrogant thing you’ve ever heard, or a joke you’re daring everybody to get. Sophia Stel doesn’t care if you get it or not, because by typing it in all lowercase, she seems to be doing both. The Vancouver artist’s debut full-length, that’s out today on A24 Music, is so much more earnest than it’s title initially lets on. 

Starting off with a name like that might give you a lot of great expectations to carry, and we're proud to report that Stel meets them all. Coming up through Vancouver’s DIY community, her 2025 project Object Permanence gave her such a promising jumping off point. Followed by the January EP How to Win at Solitaire, she’s gone on to support Lorde and booked a Halloween slot at A.G. Cook’s POP CRYPT in London, which places her in a lineage of hushed, digitally warped pop that Stereogum has compared to Oklou. Her signing to A24 Music, the film company’s record label, raised the stakes even further than you could imagine, and a debut with that backing and that name practically begs the question: industry plant? Even if you’re asking that yourself, I implore you to check out Sophia Stel anyway, and you’ll come to the correct answer all on your own. 

Her own description of the record is humorously enough the best guide to it, Stel has said it’s about “believing in yourself and believing in love,” and she dedicates it to her brothers Luke and Royce. That’s a simple enough premise, and the album treats it like an argument that has to be won track by track. 

The record opens up loud, “On My Dick” is a rush of kick drum that sets a swaggering, it-girl walk of an attitude before “Molly in the Club” and “Like a Kite” stretch things into something dreamier. Those early tracks sound like confidence being tested in real time. By “Bitches Talk Shit,” the fourth track on the record, the swagger has a target in her critics, and the album is already a little defensive about its own title. “Better Believe It” follows, a title that reads as both a dare and a plea. 

The middle is where the record turns. “I’ll Walk” is the pivot, the point where strings reportedly trace a retreat and the bravado gives way to something more tired and more honest. “15 Hours Away” arrives right after it, and its title alone suggests the distance the album is working through, between people, and between who she was when the night began and who she is now. 

Then come the vows, between “I Do” and “Wedding Song,” which sit back to back, they’re the album’s clearest statement of faith in love, and the helplessly lovable “I Do” is a danceable track that makes you feel like you’re driving with the windows down on a long road on a beautiful day with the wind in your hair and nothing could possibly go wrong. After spending the first half of the record proving herself to others, Stel spends the second half making promises to herself and someone else. “Now I’ve Got a Lot You Know,” the tenth track and an early favorite of mine, reads to me like a thesis, almost like an admission that she’s learned something and isn’t going to pretend otherwise. The closing pair, “Power” into “Burn,” leaves the story open and slightly dangerous. 

Holding it all together is her voice, which stays cool and slightly distant even when the writing gets exposed in the veins of it all. That guardedness is both the record’s signature and its risk. It makes the vulnerable moments land harder because they’re delivered so quietly, but a listener hoping for a full emotional breakdown may find themselves kept at arm’s length. Given how heavily the album leans on the idea of belief, the restraint feels deliberate, like someone who won’t make her feelings easy to read. 

The title will draw the jokes, and Stel clearly knows it. But she isn’t really claiming a crown. She’s making a bet that belief in yourself and in someone else is worth saying out loud, and the album is her case for it, and I think we can say pretty comfortably that it’s a good one. 

Listen to the greatest album of all time below: