Santogold

The album is hardly flawless, but in an era that retro-fetishizes rock and whitewashed pop, Santogold feels both raw and real. [25 Apr/2 May 2008, p.119]

The album is hardly flawless, but in an era that retro-fetishizes rock and whitewashed pop, Santogold feels both raw and real. [25 Apr/2 May 2008, p.119]

This album is a place to crash, boots to wear, pepper spray to fight back with and charcoal to dirty your hands. If the struggles of urban artists sound like this, these 12 anthems ensure that starving will never go out of style.

This album is a place to crash, boots to wear, pepper spray to fight back with and charcoal to dirty your hands. If the struggles of urban artists sound like this, these 12 anthems ensure that starving will never go out of style.

Combining new wave, ska, dub, grime, Baltimore club, and hip-hop in an ear-warping wash of 21st-century psychedelia, Santogold takes listeners on a trip to a hidden black America, where White acts as tour guide through the alleyways of her mind and undoubtedly excellent iPod.

White purveys prickly electro-pop that is disarmingly infectious, if you can get past her yap of a voice.

Santogold pours all that experience into a bracingly eclectic set full of fuzzy New Wave synths, sticky avant-soul melodies, busted-laptop beats and sing-song vocal chants inherited from the likes of Neneh Cherry and Björk. If you've managed to avoid her until now, you won't be able to for much longer.

An eclectic album for Right Now, which shows what it means to be a modern pop star, and reveals a glittery crazy-paved path towards a brave new musical future.

Santogold ultimately sounds like her own damn movement.

Through all her riffs and rhythms Ms. White comes across as both a scrappy underdog and a girlish cheerleader for everyone who feels like one.