Prewn

indie rock · post-punk · alternative rock

Prewn is the indie rock project of American singer, songwriter and guitarist Izzy Hagerup, who records for the label Exploding in Sound. She played cello as a child, and bowed strings remain central to the project's sound. Her debut album, Through the Window, arrived in 2023 and drew notice from Pitchfork for her willingness to stay with ugly feeling rather than resolve it. The follow-up, System, was released on 3 October 2025, again through Exploding in Sound, and is the first Prewn record on which Hagerup plays every instrument herself. She has described it as a private journal made public: nine songs written through a stretch of depression that circle guilt, shame, self-absorption and the social pressure underneath them, while leaving room for humour and wonder. Reviewers placed its feedback-heavy, discordant rock alongside PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love and the work of Throwing Muses, and singled out the cello on the title track for pushing an orchestral instrument as far into noise as it will go; the Guardian described her balladry as grimy and expansive and noted detours into trip-hop, while the Line of Best Fit credited her with a surrealist knack for images that feel both disconcerting and correct. Comparisons to Fiona Apple and to the band Wednesday recur across the press. Hagerup records largely at home, often overnight, and treats the amateur quality of those sessions as a deliberate part of the finished work rather than a limitation. The project performs live with a full band built around suspense and dynamic shifts, and the single Dirty Dog stands as a marker of its more experimental turns.

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