WILLOW is officially in her petal rock black era, dropping a new project that pushes her even further from her pop‑radio origins and deeper into experimental rock and alt‑soul. Released as a surprise, petal rock black arrives with a moody visual aesthetic and cryptic teases that match the album’s inward‑looking, guitar‑heavy sound.
The project builds on the emo, pop‑punk and alt textures of her recent work but layers in heavier, more psychedelic instrumentation, with WILLOW leaning into riff‑driven arrangements and almost improvisational vocal runs. Across the tracklist, she jumps from whispered vulnerability to full‑throated wails, letting songs sprawl and twist in ways that underscore the no‑rules energy she’s been cultivating over the last few years.
Across her catalog, WILLOW has been steadily moving toward this space, from the pop‑punk punch of lately I feel EVERYTHING to the jagged rock of <COPINGMECHANISM> and the jazz‑tinted experimentation of empathogen. On petal rock black, that evolution snaps into sharper focus: she’s writing, producing and playing multiple instruments herself, favoring live, often unpredictable arrangements that feel closer to jazz‑fusion and psych rock than conventional pop.
The result is an album that reads less like a pivot and more like the culmination of years of world‑building, doubling down on her commitment to treat each project as its own self‑contained universe.
