I’m with Sophia Stel

Taken from the spring 26 issue of THE FACE. Get your copy here.

Sophia Stel’s first trip to London was a Richard Linklater movie: all the romance of Before Sunrise with a touch of Slacker. ​“We got locked out, so I had to sleep outside,” she says, unbothered about roughing it in November. ​“I was with my crush, though, so it was fine.”

The evening started at Next Door Records Two in Stoke Newington for the first of the musician’s two sold-out London shows. Then it progressed to a club night at Fabric. Afterwards, they met an Airbnb dead bolt (with Sophia’s manager snoozing inside). So, the Canadian musician and the object of her affections went off into the good night.

“We were Ubering all over the city, trying to book a hotel, and ended up at a scary motel where we were like: ​‘We can’t stay here.’” Then there was the courtyard outside the Airbnb. ​“I said to her: ​‘We’re gonna die, it’s so cold.’ But we slept there for a few hours. Then we went to this diner at, like, 6am. But, I mean, honestly,” Sophia says, ​“we had a beautiful time.”

The 27-year-old’s music feels equal to such free-spirited adventures: lush electronic pop songs to soundtrack memories in formation, delivered with clear-eyed vulnerability and her lived-in alto. Her 2025 track I’ll Take It was the breakout that set out her stall: a bittersweet anthem for the lovesick and wilfully detached (“You think about me naked /​A lot, baby, face it /​I’m rum punch /​I’m basic /​I’m wasted”) that blew up on TikTok. It’s music that seems to come with listening instructions. As one online commenter put it, you have to listen to Sophia ​“on wired earbuds on a white gray day walking around the city and when you’re doing your makeup”.

In London, I’ll Take It, along with You Could Hate Me and All My Friends Are Models (from last year’s How to Win At Solitaire EP), prompted mass singalongs and sweat-soaked euphoria among her fast-growing fanbase. ​“It was an amazing energy,” she says of the Next Door Records Two show as we speak over video call: hoodie up, rollie lit and wired headphones in. ​“I always go into the crowd a little. But it was actually the first time where I had a moment where I was like: ​‘I feel a little scared!’ Not in a negative way, but more like: ​‘I’m gonna catch an elbow.’ Like, if we get too excited, we’re gonna go through the floor.” The following night, at the Chats Palace venue in Homerton after her performance, fans rushed to meet Sophia at the merch stall, where she was shifting hoodies and tees emblazoned with ​“I’M WITH SOPHIA STEL →”.

Near accidents and all-nighters aside, it’s no wonder her first transatlantic trip looms large in Sophia’s memory. Since the Bandcamp release of her 2022 debut single i need that – a propulsive, club-ready torch song – she’s barely strayed from her native Vancouver, where she still lives with two of her brothers, and where she’s calling me from her bedroom.

Sophia’s ecstatic crowds in New York, Los Angeles and London, as well as a freshly inked album deal with A24 Music, suggest it’s time for a serious scale-up. Fuelled by word-of-mouth buzz and atmospheric social media clips – as well as the handy mythmaking of an outsider city upbringing – she‘s is alternative pop’s newest, hardest feeler.

Sophia was born on Victoria Island, northern Canada, into a large, religious family – she has 10 siblings – and has been obsessed with music ever since she can remember. After mainly listening to classical records in her younger years, in high school she got into Sufjan Stevens, A.G. Cook and Young Thug. Inspired, she started making beats on GarageBand and learning Logic. ​“I would go to school and think all day about a song I was writing, come home and just play it over and over again, making my ears bleed.” By 18, she had moved into a house full of skaters in Vancouver. But even before she’d properly moved to the city, Sophia was pulling shifts at Paradise, a community-led venue and club. It was there that she met her managers, Scarlet Ross and Aaron Lum, her ride-or-dies who also shoot all her lo-fi videos.

“It’s a beautiful community that can only be formed through the experience of working ​’til four or 5am nearly every night together, dealing with a bunch of really drunk people,” Sophia remembers of the scene at Paradise, which closed a year ago. ​“But also, I was exposed to a lot of pretty cool music, like techno, that I hadn’t heard a lot of up to that point. I might not have even been really paying attention to the music because I was bartending,” she says with a laugh, ​“but it was becoming infused.”

Finding herself mentally conjuring lyrics to the thumping beats – all while pouring shots – Sophia would go home and scribble them down. Eventually, her boss let her use the club’s green room on weekdays to record. It was an incubating space that was special to her. ​“I made all of How to Win At Solitaire down there. That’s why there’s so much electronic guitar on the record, because I could play it super loud. It was,” she laments, ​“the perfect space for me,” not least because ​“you could smoke inside”.

You don’t need to read the EP’s liner notes to gauge that the songs on How to Win At Solitaire were written out of the peculiar longing of heartbreak – when life moves on, but you haven’t. On Taste – a melancholic anthem she began writing with a synth that had been left behind at Paradise – she sings: ​“Heard you’re on a new thing now /​Yeah, that’s just what it takes /​And for you it’s slowing down /​And I wonder how it tastes”. As she puts it: ​“My music has always been very personal in a way that, a lot of the time, I think: ​‘Oh, I wish it wasn’t quite so personal.’ But it’s like I have no choice. It’s vulnerable just to sing, or to make something. So if the lyrics are too, I guess maybe that’s fitting.”

Even over Zoom, Sophia’s long, fine hair, rakish frame and elfin vibe are striking; she could cameo in a photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron or Bill Henson. Unsurprisingly, the fashion world has taken note. In September, she walked in Ann Demeulemeester’s SS26 show, for which she wore cascading white feathers in her hair.

“It was my first time in Paris and I had pretty much the best week of my life,” Sophia remembers. ​“I was extremely nervous, but everyone was really nice and helped me understand. I kept the feathers in my hair for days.” Sophia’s hair is her Samson signature. In fact, her friends won’t let her cut it off. ​“About a year ago I actually Photoshopped a photo of Angelina Jolie’s pixie cut onto myself. I thought it looked quite fire. But my friends were like: ​‘No, definitely don’t do that!’ Then, within a month, I was like: ​‘Oh, this is my favourite thing about myself.’ Now I’m trying to grow it to have the longest hair in the world.”

If Sophia has caught the attention of casting directors, it’s as much about that vibe as her literal styling, and it derives from her close creative partnership with her longstanding visual collaborators. In the video for I’ll Take It, she rocks up to a 10^th-floor gym after hours, wired headphones in and purple adidas hoodie zipped, mouthing her lyrics as she lifts weights and spins about. In the sunrise opening of the rooftop-set Everyone Falls Asleep In Their Own Time, she lights a cig and not-quite-winks at the camera. By the end, she’s veered into parkour, the city skyline behind her, the moves and views a callback to her and Aaron’s youthful passion for skating. ​“With street skating, you’re always looking. You view things with a creative mind. Spots where you could do a trick. [Our] favourite thing was just to smoke weed and edit a skating video. It’s so fun.” A few months back, Sophia’s skating connection and fashion credentials synced up rather nicely when she modelled for Palace’s holiday lookbook.

Beyond the shifts at Paradise, Sophia has always made music while bopping around different forms of work, from gardening to painting houses. ​“It’s been good to do these jobs that don’t steal a lot of focus or mental energy, in some ways,” she says. ​“Even if that meant being a bit broke, it was always about having more time to make music.” But now, as her music career ramps up, she’s gone full-time. Capitalising on her rising profile, the deluxe edition of How to Win At Solitaire was recently released with features from Mura Masa, Tommy Genesis and SOPHIE collaborator Cecile Believe.

Now, with the backing of A24 Music, Sophia plans to maintain her autonomous spirit. ​“They completely support my creative vision,” she says of the record label outpost of the film company. ​“It’s been amazing to work with them.” In practice, this means she’ll still be self-producing all the music for her as-yet-untitled debut album from home – or, increasingly, while on the road as her real life as a touring musician begins.

“I’m not used to travelling,” she acknowledges, thinking ahead to her springtime dates in the US and across Europe. ​“It’s nerve- wracking: performing, meeting people… I’m not shy, but I’m super-introverted. But what’s cool is, even with so much change, every time I start making music, I feel like it’s the most grounding thing that I can do. That hasn’t changed at all.”

PRODUCTION Erin Fee Productions POST-PRODUCTION SKN Lab