Pop · DevelopingFP-024 · Side B
Hemlocke Springs Wrote Her Way Out of the Bubble
The TikTok-era bedroom-pop oddball made a debut album about leaving a strict upbringing behind, and it sounds like an artist who has finally been handed the whole stage.
In 2022, Pitchfork called a song by a 23-year-old named Hemlocke Springs "an ideal rom-com song." The song was "girlfriend," snippets of it had spread on TikTok, and the singer was Isimeme "Naomi" Udu, who at the time was working toward a master's degree at Dartmouth, per her Wikipedia biography. She had a biology degree from Spelman, two parents who emigrated from Nigeria, and a sound drawn from 1980s synth-pop and 2000s pop.
Four years later she has a debut album, the apple tree under the sea, released February 13 through AWAL, according to DIY. By June it had landed on the mid-year best-of lists at both Rolling Stone and Billboard.
The long way to an album
Most viral bedroom-pop acts are rushed into a full-length while the clip is still circulating. Springs went the other way. She put out a 2023 EP, going...going...GONE!, then spent the next stretch on other people's stages. Her own press materials list support slots for Ashnikko, Doja Cat, Chappell Roan and Conan Gray. That is a long apprenticeship in front of very large, very loud pop crowds, and it shows. The new songs are built for rooms, not phone speakers.
The comeback single, "the beginning of the end," arrived in September 2025. Exclaim! heard a more "sober" tone in it than her earlier bubblegum work, per Wikipedia.
A concept record about the apple
the apple tree under the sea is a ten-track concept album. Its story opens with Springs finding a red apple, a symbol of knowledge and "worldly" things, and follows her through a reckoning with the Christian upbringing she grew up in, as her publicist describes it. She explained the frame to DIY: the record is about growing up in a bubble and "realizing that being in that bubble was tougher than I thought."
That could have made for a heavy listen. It does not. Rolling Stone described a record where Springs plays "erratic and unusual characters" to pull apart her old ideas about religion, intimacy and herself. Billboard's Jason Lipshutz singled out her voice, the way she will double down on a sweet hook, then break a verse with a shrill cry, and named "be the girl!" and "the beginning of the end" as slam-dunk anthems.
What makes it work is control. Springs co-produced every track with the English producer Burns, who worked with her on the EP era as well, per the album's credits. The arrangements are crowded with synths and strings, but the songs never lose their center. The closing track, "be the girl!," lands on a small, bruised line about dancing alone in her room, which is where this whole story started.
The year on the road
The touring has kept pace with the reviews. Her spring headline tour, which began May 15 in Phoenix, sold out shows in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Toronto, Chicago and Atlanta, and added sets at The Governors Ball and Bonnaroo, per the tour announcement. Summer took her to Roskilde, Montreux Jazz Festival and BBK in Bilbao. This fall she is the support act on MUNA's North American headline tour, a run the announcement routed through Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago and Red Rocks.
The usual path for a TikTok breakout ends with one song and a shrug. Hemlocke Springs took four years, learned the job in front of other artists' fans and came back with a record that has a story, a sound and a point of view. In a pop year full of big names, hers is the debut that rewards the closest listening.