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Photo by Samantha Monendo

Isabel LaRosa’s latest EP, Promising Young Woman, is a much-welcome step in the right direction for the dark pop artist. Not unlike the 2020 movie of the same name, there’s something unsettling about the world Isabel LaRosa creates on this six-track body of work. Familiar routines begin to feel distorted, memories blur into fantasies, and the desire to be loved transforms into something all-consuming. Throughout the project, the dark-pop singer explores what happens when perfection becomes a performance and that performance begins to crack, revealing the insecurities, obsessions, and wounds hiding underneath. She trades polished restraint for emotional volatility. Rich with gothic-rock textures, live instrumentation, and cinematic storytelling, the project finds LaRosa expanding her sonic palette while diving deeper into themes of identity, self-worth, and the lingering aftermath of love.

The opening track, “The Things I Would Do To Be Enough For You” immediately establishes the project’s central tension. Sweeping strings set the tone as LaRosa lingers in the aftermath of a relationship, questioning her own value through memories she cannot seem to release. Her fixation is palpable, transforming ordinary remnants of a past romance into symbols of emotional dependence. Rather than searching for closure, she examines the impossible standards people create for themselves when love feels conditional.

That obsession takes on a spectral form in “Hallucination,” one of the EP’s defining moments. Driven by gritty guitars and some of LaRosa’s most dynamic vocal performances to date, the track captures the disorienting experience of seeing someone everywhere after they’ve left. The song’s gothic rock influences push her sound into new territory, allowing her grief to feel larger than life. What begins as a ghost story gradually reveals itself as something more unsettling: the realization that memory can haunt with the same persistence as any apparition.

That emotional intensity reaches a breaking point on “Hate Myself For Loving You,” where self-recrimination collides with explosive rock production. The song channels the frustration of knowing a relationship has ended while remaining unable to sever its hold. It is messy, wounded, and refreshingly direct, trading romantic fantasy for raw resentment.

In the latter half of the record, the singer-songwriter balances themes of destruction with romantic idealism. “Every Life” imagines a connection so profound that it transcends time itself, framing love as something destined to repeat across countless versions of existence. The track’s shimmering synths provide one of the EP’s brightest moments, though distance and uncertainty underscore even its hopefulness. For LaRosa, devotion remains inseparable from longing.

The EP’s most vulnerable moment arrives with “Porcelain.” Stripping away the romantic focus that dominates much of the record, LaRosa confronts body image and self-worth with startling honesty. The song examines the pressures of maintaining appearances and the dangerous pursuit of validation, exposing a different kind of performance lurking beneath the project’s surface. In a collection centered on losing another person, “Porcelain” reveals what happens when you begin losing yourself.

The last track, “Claw Marks,” serves as both a conclusion and a confession, with LaRosa attempting to move forward and acknowledging the permanence of certain wounds. Memories linger, attachments leave scars, and some people remain embedded in us long after they’ve gone. The song’s last moments offer no dramatic resolution, only a reluctant acceptance that healing does not always mean forgetting.

What makes Promising Young Woman so compelling is its willingness to sit inside contradiction. LaRosa romanticizes love while recognizing its destructive potential. She searches for validation while exposing the emptiness that pursuit can create. Throughout the project, she inhabits a dreamlike space where reality blurs with memory, obsession, and performance. In doing so, Isabel LaRosa delivers her most fully realized work yet. Promising Young Woman is darker, sharper, and more emotionally expansive than anything she has released before, capturing the strange ache of wanting to hold on while knowing you eventually have to let go.

Listen to Promising Young Woman below: