Alo emerges with the dark and sensual "Snake"

Taken from her debut Twice Burned EP, new track "Snake" ducks and dives with the kind of sensual, dark production that welds the organic to the synthetic - but it’s when Alo's vocals are pushed into the song's expressive corners does it all really feel like something with weight. It's slick, unverving and seductive.

"I wanna be the RnB Taylor Swift," Alo tells me wide-eyed and assertively as we guzzle a glass of wine in the sun. "That’s how I see myself. She’s so fearless when it comes to putting her feelings out there and she doesn’t get enough credit in general."

We’ve talked online a few times and face-to-face she’s unfazed by this, her first ever interview. Alo remains eloquent throughout, never struggling to find the words to recount her story through music. The path she's taken hasn't necessarily been a nurturing one, with personal and professional adversity shaping her drive and giving her talent focus. "I've had a few different managerial people fuck me over," she tells me. "One guy asked me for naked pictures when I was 17. I realised if I wanted men to stop objectifying me I had to start writing my own music because then I can give myself some greater value in this industry."

"I wanna be the RnB Taylor Swift..."

Writing with beats and loops as her raw materials, the self-confessed "poster girl" for SoundCloud forged many of the creative connections that birthed her debut EP through putting her music online late last year. “I don’t have Spotify, I only use SoundCloud," she proudly confesses. "That’s where the real people are grinding and uploading their shit. [At first] I put some random covers online - some Drake covers with my piano - and I found yugana, this 17-year old producer from New York who had this instrumental I really liked."

"I didn’t know how to market myself then - I just messaged him and asked if I could write to it [and] I did this freestyle 'Stay'. He reposted it and it went crazy."

Alo's story is shot through with a DIY ethic; since moving to London she's ​worked tirelessly to find the right people and the right sound despite the more mundane concerns of life. "I have a job in the city from 9-6, Monday to Friday," she explains. "Today I woke up at 6am [it’s a Saturday] and I’ve been recording all day. I don’t have a label. Everything I do is in my bedroom. You’ve seen my Instagram. I record in a fucking closet. I’m literally hunched over when I’m recording. Every part of the EP is me - I wrote all the songs. It’s a proper piece of me that nobody can take away."

She stresses how generosity and collaboration has been important and the story behind “Snake” is an emblem of the nurturing and sharing that's helped Alo find her way: “I came to London for love and I wrote 'Snake' just after I got fucked over by my ex."

"I always follow random people - thousands of them - on SoundCloud. I wanted to see everything that appears in my stream. I'd found thisinstrumental by a guy called Soundfauna and I asked him if I could use it. He's this kid from LA. I wrote for four hours and finished it. I sent it to him before he even responded

"He loved it - said I could do whatever I wanted with it. It was the most moving thing anyone’s ever sent to me. The track vocals were produced by this other amazing guy called Casio McCombs who also worked on another of my EP tracks "Mean It", but Soundfauna played every single instrument live on 'Snake' himself: the shaker files, the bongo files, everything. It’s not just a beat. He Beck’d to that shit. It’s a big gift. So much went into that song and he gave it to me because I just wanted his music to be heard."

Would she do the same to help someone, I ask her? “In a heartbeat. I’d write hooks like hallowe’en candy and throw them out there and see what sticks. I’m a hook whore."

"All I know is sitting down and writing music - and talking about it.’

The Twice Burned EP is released worldwide on 5 May.