PinkPantheress’s Fancy That is a sleek, stylish sugar rush of a record with nine tracks in 20 minutes, and not a second wasted. It’s a tribute to the pop and club culture that raised an entire generation of British kids, packed with samples that aren’t just nostalgic, but lovingly re-contextualised; sampledelica with soul.

The very first sound you hear is a classic Underworld sample gliding over a classic two-step garage beat before Pink’s effortlessly sweet vocals glide in as she marries disparate but equally iconic strands of British club culture. Techno and garage bubbled up in tandem, each representing different facets of the UK’s nightlife legacy, and where others might pit these genres against each other, PinkPantheress stacks them with a sleek pop hook on top like a perfect three-ingredient recipe. It’s instantly familiar and masterful in its construction, like The Avalanches if they were piecing together the formative sounds of British FM radio instead of crate-digging soul and psych.

PinkPantheress uses hooks and loops not as seasoning but as instruments in themselves, resulting in a kind of pop sampledelica. Despite sourcing some of the druggiest records in club history, it feels remarkably clean and sober - not in a sterile way, but a joyful one. This isn’t a soundtrack to being off your nut in a warehouse, but a love letter to hearing songs on the school run, or out of your older sibling’s bedroom.

On Girl Like Me the massive Basement Jaxx chorus is lifted almost wholesale, lovingly placed at the heart of a new context. It doesn’t feel like a lazy nostalgia grab the way so many pop songs do when they drag in an old hook for cheap thrills. Instead, it feels curated like a mixtape, understanding what made those hooks feel like lightning in a bottle. There’s such an abundance of references layered here that it becomes less about any one sample and more about the whole collage: a sonic memory box for anyone who grew up hearing these tracks on Top 40 radio, sandwiched between homework deadlines and first crushes. It’s soothing and satisfying because the construction is so masterful and precisely layered.

PinkPantheress may not want to be a pop star, but she has undeniably struck a chord with young women around the world, not by presenting an untouchable persona but by being likeable, low-key, and herself. Her music is bombastic underneath, the beats bursting with life, hooks stacked on hooks, layer after layer of garage, jungle and techno assembled like a sonic scrapbook, but at the centre of it all is a soft-spoken, sweet singer just slightly to the side of the spotlight. Less “night on pills”,  more “girly sleepover”, PinkPantheress is crafting some of the most exciting pop music around, straddling the line between pop and rave. Fancy That will thrill pop fans with its sugar-rush hooks and tight structures, but it also delivers for ravers who live for jungle breaks and basslines. It’s a reminder of something Britain does better than anywhere else. From rave to grime to UKG we’ve always found a way to smuggle our underground sounds into the charts. It’s not about nostalgia for a subculture, but about recognising that this is our culture, and celebrating it with style and wit. PinkPantheress is a cool-headed, quietly charismatic artist who knows exactly what she’s doing.