“People say I’m the ‘biggest wimp on Warped Tour’, so I’m leaning into that!” Why LØLØ is ready to hit you right in the feels

All in all, LØLØ says the recent operation on her vocal cords went well. It just sucks that it also turned out to be fucking gross.

“Unfortunately, I was awake for the laser surgery and it was pretty disgusting!” she begins, her trademark raspy voice coming through much quieter than usual. “I could feel it, I could hear it, and I could smell it.”

A face-creasing wince follows.

“I could smell my burning flesh...”

Suffice to say, the potent aroma of her own sizzling tissue wasn’t something LØLØ ever anticipated experiencing. Just a few months ago, she was supporting Simple Plan on tour with no issues whatsoever. She was warming up every night. She was cooling down. She wasn’t drinking. She was having early nights. Even LØLØ – a chronic overthinker hardwired for self-deprecation as opposed to self-congratulation – admits she was slaying on tour.

“I was in the best vocal shape of my entire life!” she smiles as she catches up with K! from Miami. And yet, having avoided every voice-frazzling gauntlet thrown up on the road, just two days after the tour ended, LØLØ managed to Stan her way into surgery. No, seriously…

“I went to see my best friend's show at a small club in Toronto and when he came onstage I screamed like he was Joe Jonas,” she laughs. “I was just trying to be supportive and then I felt something immediately. I gave myself a polyp – I don't even know what the fuck it is, it’s like a blister on the vocal cord that can pop.”

Which brings us neatly to December 18, a round of laser surgery, burning flesh and a recovery period that hasn’t been the easiest for a passionate conversationalist and expert quip-maker. At first LØLØ had to go five days without talking. Later, she was able to ratchet that up to one minute. The increments keep going up.

“I'm only allowed to speak for 20 minutes at the moment, but it’s not like at 21 minutes I'm gonna die,” she says. “But for a long time I was dying to cough, and I'm not allowed to cough!”

The good news is that just because LØLØ can’t sing – or cough – right now doesn’t mean we can’t hear her at her very best. Prior to Not-Joe-Jonas Gate, she’d been hard at work on the follow-up to her brilliant debut falling for robots and wishing i was one. It was a record that established her as an empress of empathy and executioner of exes. Equal parts heartfelt and hilarious, the pop-punk pyrotechnics and romantic folly on display on that debut made her one of the most exciting new stars in rock.

You can tell from her face how happy she is to be back, it’s just she only has 20 minutes, or possibly 21, to give us the LØLØwdown about her just-announced second record, god forbid a girl spits out her feelings!.

We’ve already had a triple-hit of it via the excellent me with no shirt on, american zombie and the devil wears converse. When she introduced the aforementioned lead single me with no shirt on as “not your typical LØLØ song” she wasn’t lying. She’s going new places on this second record, and further proof of it comes with her new single 007, a sleek, tongue-in-cheek anthem reframing a relationship in spy terminology.

The clock is ticking for her to explain, so it’s time to get into it…

You get a whole lifetime to make your debut album, and then a short window to follow it up. Where was your head at going into making your second record?
“Honestly, I was panicking because on my first album I took my sweet-ass time – I wrote it over three and a half years. For this one I was like, ‘Holy shit – I have a year!’ But what I did know was that I wanted to explore more of an indie, ’90s pop rock sound rather than a Green Day or a Weezer kind – the side of me that’s like Michelle Branch, Liz Phair and Ashlee Simpson. It was scary, because I know that all of my fans really love the heavier stuff – well, not that I was soooo heavy before – but I wanted to go back to my roots, to when I first started writing songs. I love everything that I've made in the past, but I wanted to explore a more vulnerable side. I always get comments where I'm always ‘the poppiest artist’ or ‘The biggest pussy on Download Fest’ or ‘The biggest wimp on Warped Tour’ so I thought to myself, ‘You know what? Maybe I'll just lean into that and go even further.’ I could see people saying that it’s really different, but to me it's not that different. For me, the main thing that makes something a ‘LØLØ song’ are the lyrics, the topics and the humour and that's all still there.”

And how did you end up landing on the compelling title, god forbid a girl spits out her feelings?
“So, another comment I've gotten in the past are ones like, ‘All your songs are about love or break-ups’, so I had a list of specific concepts that I wanted to add in because I've written a lot about anxiety and growing up before. But then this whole thing with my voice happened, I was on so much vocal rest that my album got cut short. It's 13 songs but I wanted it to be 16, and at the time it was just 12 fucking relationship songs and break-up songs (laughs). I thought everyone was gonna rat on it and say I’m, ‘Just another girl singing about a boy.’ But fuck, I can't help it if this is just everything I was going through in the last year – god forbid a girl spits out her feelings! As I thought that, I knew it was a really funny title and that I should write it as a song that would be the album’s intro. The title-track is actually about me putting this album together and being like, ‘If you don't want me to write songs about this, people should treat me better!’ I don't know what to tell you, it’s just what I've been going through – another muse, another day!”

James Bond is certainly a new muse for you, too. At what point does it occur to you that there needs to be a spy-themed LØLØ song called 007?
“Everything, honestly, has to do with the fact that I had a year to write this. I’m the type of person that needs inspiration to come to me, I can't just write a song. At the time, I was genuinely happy, not stressed out and not anxious. I was like, ‘What do I write about? Oh my god, I need my boyfriend to cheat on me.’”

It’s certainly a lesser spotted prayer to the Love Gods…
“I just needed something to happen (laughs). I started thinking, ‘What can I pull on?’ and then went through famous movie titles, and that's when I picked up 007, and [fellow new song] the punisher as well. I wrote 007 down and thought it was a cool concept that I could 100 per cent relate to a time in my life, to write about a spy telling you he's good or whatever, but you’re like, ‘You just wanna fuck; I might be on top of you, but I am on to you!’ But at least I'm aware this time – the awareness makes a difference, it's on my terms.”

So what does 007 mean, not so much for the Mr. Bond bloke in question, but for you?
“The whole thing is about reclaiming power. It's not just, ‘Oh, boo-hoo, you hurt me’ because I know exactly what's going on. I've been around the block at this point, I'm not going to play the victim here. [It’s like saying to someone] ‘I know exactly what I'm walking into, and that's okay – but just admit that you're full of shit!’ It's a more mature outlook on how I would cover the topic than a couple years ago, when I would probably be sad and be saying that I didn't see it coming. Now I'm aware. I am feeling tougher. I mean… I still don't know what the fuck is going on, but I know a little bit more, I guess!”

Did you make any resolutions for yourself going into 2026?
“My resolution should really be to stop beating myself up about every little thing, but one is to get way better at guitar. I'm good at it, but I want to rip solos onstage. That is my main resolution. And also, I went from once having no fans to then having fans, and that was a little overwhelming. People tell me that I’m good with this, but I want to be even better with interacting online and having more time with my fans.”

Finally, in your 2024 K! cover story you told us that you take pictures of all the Uber Eats robots you come across on the street and even keep a list of their names on your phone. Soooooo… how is that infatuation coming along 18 months on? Still obsessed with them?
“Today, I was at the crosswalk and one of the delivery robots asked me if I would press the light for it to get across. I was like, ‘Of course, don't worry.’ I literally said that out loud and this guy just looked at me like, ‘Why the fuck is she talking to it?’”

007 is out now. god forbid a girl spits out her feelings! is released on April 17 via Fearless Records.

Read this next:

• LØLØ: “I’m either heartbroken or anxious! There is nothing else”
• LØLØ: The 10 songs that changed my life
• LØLØ: “Songwriting is therapeutic… I’m my own therapist which is a problem, probably!”