yyxy – “love4eva” (Feat. Grimes)

yyxy – “love4eva” (Feat. Grimes)

Grimes has had an eventful few weeks. Ever since she went public about her relationship with vaguely scary futuristic billionaire Elon Musk, the two of them walking the red carpet at the Met Gala together, it’s been harder to think of her as a musician rather than a loosely-defined public figure. (When she defended Musk against charges of union-busting in some since-deleted tweets, that feeling only increased.) But Grimes is still making music, and she’s just come out with a new boundary-crossing collaboration with the K-pop group LOOΠΔ.

LOOΠΔ (or Loona) are a 12-member K-pop girl group, and they’ve spawned some smaller outfits, including the sub-group yyxy, which features four of those 12 members. Today, after teasing it, yyxy came out with a video for “love4eva,” a new track that features Grimes. Grimes isn’t in the video, and it’s hard to tell, on first listen, what she did on the track. Maybe she sings backup? Maybe she contributed production? There’s a noisy EDM breakdown, midway through the song, that sounds a bit like her. But whatever her contributions, she gets a full “featuring” credit.

The hard, gleaming, hook-centric intensity of K-pop has long been a big influence on Grimes, so it’s interesting to see her cross over into that world. And “love4eva,” on which the four members of yyxy sing bright early-’90s R&B harmonies over relentlessly fizzy beats, is a fine example of the genre. In the video, the four members play private school students, sometimes dressed like Cher from Clueless, who sneak out of their school to… eat flowers? There’s probably a metaphor there. Watch the video below.

Yyxy’s debut mini-album Beauty & The Beat is scheduled to come out today.

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