TEO.x3 and Tamta wired serotonin and static into the hyperreal heartbreak of ‘sprite’ –

TEO.x3 might have borrowed the stylings of a Midwest Emo album title for their debut EP, iDidntMeanToGhostYouButMyWifiCrashedAgain, but sprite—the standout hyperpop fever dream featuring Tamta—spiked the sentiment with 8-bit nostalgia, polyphonic madness, and bubblewrapped chaos with a bittersweet emotional payload.

If Swift and Carpenter come prepackaged with algorithmic perfection, sprite flips that on its head with everything that makes outsider pop worth rewiring your brain for. The lyrics are all hyperaware whimsy and philosophical mischief—“have you ever seen a sexy person drinking Sprite? Me neither”—yet they’re never just performative weirdness. There’s depth in the very online kind of melancholy wrapped in pixelated optimism, where heartbreak becomes a glitter-soaked spectacle, and sugary synth hooks can soundtrack your slow spiral and serotonin spikes in the same breath.

The chaotic tenderness in TEO.x3’s production meets its match in Tamta, whose razor-sharp alt-pop performance drags the drama into technicolour with her signature command. Between the ASMR flickers, glitch textures, and dizzying layers, sprite becomes a love letter to the emotionally glitched generation raised in the static between Wi-Fi crashes and DM drafts.

Following features on New Music Friday UK, Hyperpop, All New Pop, and more, sprite cracked the hyperpop code without diluting the disorder.

sprite is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast