FKA Twigs (stylized FKA twigs), born Tahliah Barnett, has brought dance and electronic music into 2025 with her latest record “EUSEXUA.” The album, her first since 2019’s “MAGDALENE,” is one in a large wave of artists creating music inspired by house, rave, techno and other electronic subgenres. However, Twigs’ 2025 release is done with an expertise that sets the British polymath miles away from her compatriots.
To listen to “EUSEXUA” is to give yourself wholly to the feeling, to wrap yourself in the strange world of Twigs and the club inside her mind. “EUSEXUA” is an adventurous celebration of the human experience and sets a high standard for other albums to compete with.
The album’s title track is a listener’s first introduction into what Twigs has created, and lays the groundwork for how many of the album’s tracks are formulated. The song begins with an electrified guitar arpeggio, which crescendos into a pulsing strobe-like beat. At its completion, the listener is left with no doubts about what “Eusexua” is: a wave of feeling, the rush of excitement which precedes a high.
“Eusexua is a practice. Eusexua is a state of being. Eusexua is the pinnacle of human experience,” Twigs notes in the title track’s music video.
Simply releasing this tidal wave of a single would have cemented Twigs’ genius, but she continues with an album of revelatory hits.
Following the title track, “Girl Feels Good” comes in like a chaser. The trance elements of the song are reminiscent of those from Madonna’s “Ray of Light” (another electronic album produced by an artist not traditionally associated with the genre).
“Room of Fools,” the fifth track, has a distinct Bjork-ish quality in the way the Twigs’ vocals shift and change over a classic Euro-techno beat. Going from the highest of high notes to the lowest guttural growls, Twigs transports you to a sweaty, smoke-filled underground club somewhere in Germany, repeating “It feels nice / In the room of fools.” As the song speeds up and slows down, her vocals get more and more erratic.
Other tracks on the album, like “Keep it, Hold it,” show how Twigs has not abandoned her vocal and stylistic accoutrements she has accrued during her career (for 2019’s “MAGDALENE,” Twigs became classically trained in opera and gregorian styles). This track features her piercing vocals, which first appear as a prayerful rumination before transforming into a rapturous house salute.
“Drums of Death,” the short but electric second single from “EUSEXUA,” is glitchy and off-tempo in a maniacal mastermind sort of way. Vocals are cut up, repeated and augmented to form layer upon layer of harmony and music – but this doesn’t make the song muddy. Every individual sound byte can be considered a piece of music in its own right.
“EUSEXUA” is different from a lot of Twigs’ earlier projects – like her 2022 mixtape “CAPRISONGS” – in the sense that it lacks featured artists. The only designated feature on the album is on “Childlike Things,” which shockingly features the untrained daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, North West. As the title suggests, the song is childish and playful, with Twigs chanting over a Japanese-inspired melody. West’s verse took fans by surprise as the 11-year-old literally praises Jesus in a Japanese rap.
Twigs’ foray into electronic music is not very surprising when you consider her previous work featuring production credits from Skrillex and Arca. However, it is still an exciting addition to her catalog and the modern musical canon. With this album, Twigs has introduced an entirely new word and feeling, and we are wholeheartedly welcoming in this new eusexual epoch.
