Listen: Manou – Sadie

Soon to add extra weight to Lorde’s hook-filled ditties about meeting boys at the local sports facility, and Chlöe Howl‘s faintly filthy teenage kicks, is sixteen-year-old Londoner Manou.

The half-German, half-Brit is working with heavyweight producer PNUT, who has sprinkled golddust on Dido and Amy Winehouse releases in the past, as well as Manou’s close contemporaries Foxes and Eliza Doolittle.

The first taster of those sessions, ‘Sadie’, comes off like early-Marina & the Diamonds fronted by a more elfin, less assured character. Drawing attention to her tender years with wide-eyed half-rhymes about trying, ‘your very best/in your heels and your lucky dress.’ The key to Manou’s magic is not innovation, but rather intimacy. There’s a closeness and warmth to the synths which pool around her loving tones; one not-so easily counterfeited, with a gimlet eye on global domination, and the gold teeth that seem to come with it.