Sophia Stel’s a mercurial sort. In her few Instagram posts, her face is barely visible. Captions are kept short and vague. And her Spotify bio? Nonexistent. Yet, her most successful track, ‘I’ll Take It’, is going nuts on TikTok for its strutting kicks, sleazy bassline and swaggering Auto-Tuned declaration: “I’m tortured, you love it, you hate it, you think about me naked, a lot, baby – face it”.
Sophia Stel on The Cover of NME. Credit: Sam Keeler for NMEWhen Stel answers NME’s call from her bedroom in Vancouver, Canada, she’s jostling the phone and smoking like she’s FaceTiming a friend. We catch the 26-year-old just after she has played the first shows of her debut headline tour. Travelling is a dream for the Victoria native; she hadn’t even visited her country’s capital city of Toronto until she performed there a few days ago, and she’s soon off to play a European leg in November. “I can’t believe the energy – I’m still in shock to be honest,” she professes. “People will be singing every single song, that’s mind-blowing to me.”
With just two EPs to her name, Stel has quickly become the ‘IYKYK’ name for her sprawling, genre-blending ballads. Whether it’s running around Vancouver with friends, a drunken moment alone, or partying at her shows, she bottles the fragile, fleeting chaos of her mid-twenties and merrily gulps it down. “It’s important to do things that allow you to lower your guard,” Stel tells us. “I don’t think it’s necessary to use a substance to achieve that, but it’s good to spend your money on things that will be gone in a moment – like a round of drinks for your friends…”
Credit: Sam Keeler for NMEWhen Sophia Stel first got into partying, she was a self-described “late bloomer”. Growing up in a religious family of 10, her first do was a friend’s birthday celebration in high school – but “at that point, I was still shy and stuff”. It wasn’t until she moved to Vancouver in 2021 that she embraced the city’s nightlife, and in turn, herself. “It’s really when my life started to get good in a lot of ways,” she reminisces. “I came out that year, and I moved here with more confidence than I had ever had in my life.”
In Vancouver, Stel threw herself into the skating community and worked at Paradise, a small after-hours club and creative studio. Only open on weekends, it was the sort of place that was “everyone’s second job”, and Stel’s coworkers quickly became some of her closest friends and collaborators. They would also go on to foster her relentless work ethic: “We can’t give up on making art just because we have to work our asses off all the time, that’s all the more reason that we need it. I’m very inspired by my friends – they inspire me to keep trying harder.”
Stel would graft at Paradise for nearly five years, gardening and painting houses on the side while making music in her bedroom. She would begin releasing the first inklings of debut EP ‘Object Permanence’ in February 2024, pairing it with spontaneous, lo-fi footage inspired by skate videos. They depict Stel going on nature walks, partying with friends – and when Paradise closed earlier this March, she captured the club’s final night for ‘Taste’ and its wistful video.
“We can’t give up on making art just because we have to work our asses off”
It was during this time where Stel would catch the eye of hyperpop pioneer A.G. Cook. He had seen footage of one of her first shows in September 2024, DMing her to give his compliments and suggesting she open for him later that year. She accepted. “I really look up to him and he’s been inspiring to me for a long time,” she says. “We met at the show and we went to the studio another day and hung out. He was already giving me helpful tips on the technical side of stuff, he’s a great guy.”
When Stel began to write her second EP, she asked Paradise if she could use the club’s recording studio on its off days. The owners agreed, and she would build a makeshift setup, disassembling the studio as the weekend edged closer. Then, when the club shut, she would rebuild her studio all over again.
It was that haphazard, spur-of-the-moment magic which was responsible for ‘I’ll Take It’. The sleeper hit now soundtracks videos with millions of views – ranging from the joyous reclamation of your singledom after a breakup and an orangutan encouraging you to “crash out, queen” to Troye Sivan using it for a trusty thirst trap. It’s a rather wide spectrum of emotions, but perhaps those videos are feeding off the “chaotic lifestyle” Stel was living when making the song.
Credit: Sam Keeler for NMEReeling from a breakup with her long-term girlfriend in the summer of 2024, Stel was going out every night, smoking weed, buddying up with strangers she’d meet at cafés. As a post-breakup tradition, Stel was also listening to lots of party rock tracks as “that’s what gets me through it” – think Flo Rida, or early-2010s Rihanna. On a walk, the main beat for ‘I’ll Take It’ was circling her head, and she was trying to figure out the melody.
In a rare occurrence for Stel, the verse suddenly rushed into her head; as fate would have it, she found her best friend and collaborator Aaron Lum perched on the curb as she returned home. He suggested they go straight to Paradise to record the verse. “It’s such a dungeon, but we stayed down there for eight hours or something,” she recalls fondly. “We kept building the song together and had so much fun and we were partying while we were doing it.”
Stel thought a few people might get the song when she tacked it onto the deluxe edition of ‘Object Permanence’ last March, but didn’t anticipate just how much it would blow up afterwards. “I felt like the idea was good, but there was no moment where I was like, ‘This is a hit’ – even right before it was released,” she adds in slight disbelief. “The only thing that I knew was that the feeling of making it was so good.”
“You have to treat everything as a big deal, [take] every little celebration. Partying is a big part of that”
As Stel continued to make her second EP, she made a decision that would soon encapsulate her entire experience making it. Ditching her smartphone for a Blackberry Pearl “dumb phone”, she found that its only game was Solitaire – the classic solo card game. Unsure of how to play, she Googled its instructions, only to be met with a rather oblique suggestion: “Move your cards with intention.”
The mysterious suggestion birthed the title of her EP, ‘How To Win At Solitaire’ – a drowsy blend of shoegaze and dancefloor-ready rhythms examining how to be alone. It’s set in the throes of Stel’s hypersocial routine, with ‘All My Friends Are Models’ capturing her carpe diem ethos: “I’m making something up to get another bottle / You’ll nеver get a chance if all you do is dawdlе”.
Stel calls herself a “big advocate” for partying, reasoning: “Sometimes the world can be so like… ‘wake up, get to work, always feel your best’ – we forget to celebrate. You have to treat everything as a big deal, [take] every little celebration. Partying is a big part of that.”
Credit: Sam Keeler for NMEBut in between these celebrations, the songs off ‘How To Win At Solitaire’ feel like stealing snatches of breath from underwater. Stel pleads to the heavens on ‘Everyone Falls Asleep In Their Own Time’, the soaring guitars and lush breakbeats accompanying her own self-assurance in the aftermath of the breakup. Meanwhile, ‘Solitaire’ sees her admit her own emotionally avoidant tendencies while mourning her breakup amidst cosmic, fractured vocal samples and muffling pads: “You might feel proud of where I’ve been / But then again I guess we just won’t know”.
“A lot of the songs on the EP are talking about accepting loss,” she tells us. “All the songs do really explore that and I think for that reason, there is a sense of solitude, because that’s a lot of what I’ve been learning to deal with.”
When NME observes the contrast between Stel’s largely introspective music and her talkative personality, Stel appears to be caught off-guard. It’s not something she’s heard before, she concedes, but “if you know me, I’m extroverted, but I get super easily socially worn out – then I won’t talk for the rest of the day”. Later in the chat, she poses: “Maybe I have always been quite introverted, but I grew up in a huge family and became more extroverted over time and had music to cope and create a quiet space.”
Perhaps that’s the key to what makes a Sophia Stel song so magical. Amidst the drama of life, she isn’t content to show an ultra-curated, perfectly chic depiction of her life, nor exaggerate her circumstances. These songs feel like they’re meant for rattling subways, smoking areas, empty roads – liminal spaces where Stel can meet herself wherever she’s at once the party’s over. “I’m interested in allowing myself to be messy, because I try to maintain a lot of control,” she says. “It’s scary to be vulnerable, but the best things happen from that.”
Sophia Stel’s ‘How To Win At Solitaire’ EP is out now via Pack Records.
Listen to Sophia Stel’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Alex Rigotti
Photography: Sam Keeler
Stylist: Scarlet Ross
Label: Pack Records
English (US) · 