Image by Ciara Reddy
British-Finnish artist otta has released “BLIP,” the last single before her debut album ASTRA lands on November 20th via löyly. The track comes with a video directed by Ciara Reddy.
“BLIP” grew out of a demo otta originally made just to teach the song to her live band, and that rough, unpolished energy carried through to the final version — a vocal floating above a club-indebted drum pulse while she turns over a relationship’s fading edges. “This song has always existed more in a live setting,” she says. “It’s nice the album version is just a version that happened naturally.” Speaking about the video, she notes she and Reddy share a similar process: some things planned, the rest left to emerge on its own.
ASTRA is notable within otta’s catalogue as her first fully self-performed record, though she’s brought in King Krule and Little Dragon collaborator Dilip Harris to mix it. The album follows 2025’s With Love From Everywhere, written in the aftermath of a COVID infection that developed into chronic fatigue — a period of enforced stillness that shaped ASTRA’s preoccupation with the small, ephemeral textures of daily life, built partly from field recordings otta made from her window. Much of the album was recorded in Lisbon, and carries traces of bossa nova rhythm and lush string arrangement alongside otta’s usual genre-scrambling instincts.
otta has drawn praise from i-D, the Quietus, The Guardian, The Fader, NME, Pitchfork, and Clash, with past collaborators including Warp’s kwes. and black midi’s Morgan Simpson.
ASTRA tracklist:
- MEZZANINE
- NATURALLY (INTRO)
- STRAIN
- CAR
- MATCH
- STRANGER
- BOWIE
- BLIP
otta plays Spanners (Arch 504, London) on November 26th.