LØLØ

LØLØ first drew notice among Canadian listeners as a singer/songwriter through widely shared reinterpretations of well-known tracks, presented from the vantage point of the characters within those songs. She soon reversed course and began writing her own infectious, introspective material shaped by the pop-punk bands of an earlier era.

Born in Toronto as Lauren Mandel, she started playing guitar while still in high school, transforming entries from her journals into song sketches that she performed at local open mikes. The indie-pop focus of her debut EP, Sweater Collection, brought forward the track “Yours,” and a stylistically comparable cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” expanded her reach. During the COVID-19 lockdown she amused herself, and eventually a growing audience, by producing “answer” versions of songs by Taylor Swift and Adele, rewriting the lyrics to convey the inner thoughts of the original subjects.

Beginning with the 2020 single “Hate U,” her subsequent recordings fused the electronic textures of her earlier work with a pronounced guitar-driven approach. The 2021 EP overkill moved further into pop-punk territory and became her first release on the alt-punk label Hopeless Records. By the close of that year she was touring with established acts in the scene, among them Simple Plan, New Found Glory, and Less Than Jake. Her next EP, 2022’s debbie downer, contained the tracks “junkie,” “THE FLOOR IS LAVA!!,” and the title song, a collaboration with alt-pop singer Maggie Lindemann. In 2024 LØLØ issued her debut full-length, falling for robots & wishing i was one, which featured the stand-out cuts “faceplant” (inspired by a genuine, bone-breaking fall she endured the previous year), “hot girls in hell,” and the memorable “u turn me on (but give me depression).”