Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based Sophie Powers is 22 and already several records deep — the Red in Revenge EP, 2024's Glitch: Lvl 1, and a run of singles with titles like "popoff" and "spiderwebs" that tell you exactly what kind of pop she makes: hyper, bratty, and completely unbothered. "klepto," out on Encore Recordings, might be her sharpest three minutes yet.
The song has been waiting for its moment. Powers wrote it back in 2023, co-writing with Jutes and Cam Hunter and producing with Mike Gonek, but she held it back because it needed the right partner in crime. That turned out to be Chinese pop star Lexie Liu — known in the West for tracks like "X" and for voicing Seraphine in K/DA's "MORE". Liu heard the song on a 2025 visit to Los Angeles, and recorded her part the next day, before flying home to China.
Powers calls the song an ode to the Y2K divas — her moodboard runs from Nelly Furtado and Peaches (who she once opened for) to Lady Gaga and Britney Spears — and the opening hook lands like a mission statement: "Got a habit, always acting up / They say I'm too dramatic / Push 'em all aside and steal the spotlight / I'm a klepto." Liu has said the song is about "stepping into the spotlight unapologetically," and the video, directed by Hannah De Vries, plays the whole thing as a glamorous heist — two stars treating the spotlight like something that was theirs to steal all along.
If her face looks familiar from somewhere completely different, there's a reason. In 2025 she auditioned for season 23 of American Idol — the same season as Mattie Pruitt, who played it straight all the way to the Top 7 — and instead of singing for her life, she deadpanned an original joke song called "STFU": a mostly spoken list of everything that needs to shut up, from Karens, vegans, and babies to laundry, war, dinosaurs, traffic, and groceries. All three judges voted no, and Lionel Richie pronounced himself "mortified." Powers has since explained that the whole thing was a plan — she was signed to a label when Idol cast her, so she couldn't have won anyway; the audition was a joke designed to send people looking for her real music. It worked: the clip went viral, and she later spun her fun side off into a separate side project under another name: Pixl Girl.
"I don't think you're a good fit for American Idol – I know, I'm Canadian."
I could not believe the Pixl Girl and Sophie Powers were the same person. In her audition for American Idol, she clearly was punking them with a deliberately silly song, just for LULZ or a clever strategy for a promotion. She keeps a totally separate account under her alternate name and uses that to park her other less serious music.
This is absolutely my top favorite song of 2026 so far and it looks like it's gonna stay that way. I absolutely love how she nailed the 2000s electro pop sound that I also love. It's absolutely addictive and catchy as hell.
— Red Hector
Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-htYGCnmI8Q
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