Benee spoke with us about her sophomore album Ur an Angel I’m Just Particles.

BENEE wants her newest album, Ur an Angel I’m Just Particles, to feel like “stepping into a world,” complete with both beauty and existentialism. Last month, the New Zealand-born, recently Los Angeles-based artist (and her foster kitten Steve Jobs) joined us in a press conference hosted by 1824, to talk about the new record, a conceptual set of songs that illustrate her growth as an artist and a person.  

BENEE soundtracked the COVID era for many alternative pop lovers with megahit “Supalonely,” a handful of well-crafted EPs, and debut album Hey u x, but for her second record she wanted to change her approach. She shaped it not only around a sound, but also a concept, explaining that the record is divided into four chapters: obsession, breakdown, chaos, and ascent. Her signature eclectic pop sound acts as the glue binding these chapters together, with the end result mimicking the cycle of a mental breakdown. But rather than shaping her writing around the theme, she found its shape in the aftermath, explaining “It wasn’t me trying to write about transcendence. I think it was more me realizing that was what was happening as I came to creating the visual world of the album post-making the music and it all made a lot of sense after writing for so long.”

While Ur an Angel’s essence may be rooted in the otherworldly, its impulses are very much grounded here on Earth. BENEE speaks of an existentialism that has grown around her life after her move to the U.S. and how “It’s impossible to not be affected by your environment when making art.” Upon moving, she found herself disoriented between the shocking state of American healthcare and homelessness and the limitless diversity and opportunity available to her in LA. The “crazy, crazy shit that you see on the daily” made her life in New Zealand seem like living in a bubble by comparison. She says the track “Cinnamon” responds to this through the lens of relationship woes, while “Doomsday” channels a broader sense of existential dread. 

With all of LA’s opportunity also came a sort of overwhelm as far as the collaborators available to work with. BENEE describes it to be like speed dating, inevitable uncomfortableness included. She says, “When I first got here, I definitely had a strange identity crisis because I had been so used to working with this one guy in New Zealand called Josh [Fountain]. I was so comfortable with him and also just knew the kind of music I wanted to make, and then coming here you’re thrown into sessions with the biggest pop producers in music and the biggest pop writers.” 

Benee shot by Jorge Rico

While exciting to have so many options at her disposal, it was also a change of pace that was a bit weird to meld with her normal process. She says of the adjustment, “I like to write my own songs, and I think that kind of made me question whether I could do that…It’s just trial and error, and a lot of it is error.” BENEE ended up working with a handful of producers for Ur an Angel, citing Luka Kloser and Elvira Anderfjärd as some of the most special collaborators on the record. These are the only female producers she has worked with, which she says unfortunately speaks to how male-dominated the industry is. With Kloser and Anderfjärd, she felt “There was a deeper level of comfort and relatability.”  When we asked who she’d like to collaborate with in the future, BENEE mentions Gorillaz and her love for remix albums. If you happen to be reading this Damon Albarn, people loved this idea.

The biggest difference between Ur an Angel and BENEE’s past work is rooted in her growing wisdom and experience as an individual. She jokes about her frontal lobe finally developing before explaining, “I feel a lot wiser, or maybe I’m just asking much bigger questions and everything’s feeling realer.” She digs deeper than ever into this realness in the track “Heaven,” which is a plaintive, delicate pop ballad about losing a loved one. She says it’s the track that brought her the most catharsis to write, making it a powerful, yet deeply personal note to conclude the album on.   

‘Ur an Angel I’m Just Particles’ was released Nov. 7, 2025 via Republic Records