Oklou and the search for a world beyond her own

10 March, 2025

NME The Cover 2025 Oklou, image by Furmaan Ahmed

Some artists build walls to disguise their interior worlds. They wear their art like armour to scream louder and reveal their truth – or a version of it, at least – from a distance. Others roll over and expose every soft spot for all to see. Oklou lingers somewhere between, both close and just out of reach. For listeners, her slip-through-your-fingers pop feels like an open window. Really, it’s more like a mirror: a way for Oklou to make sense of herself, and less about being seen.

Over the past decade or so, the musician, vocalist and producer born Marylou Mayniel has navigated this space and nurtured an emotionally charged sonic identity in the process. To call it “whimsical music for weird times” works, but it’s almost too easy – a shortcut that doesn’t quite capture what she brings to releases like ‘For the Beasts’ (her 2017 EP with kindred spirit Casey MQ) and 2020’s glorious mixtape ‘Galore’. Something more evocative – a scream underwater, say, or the hum of ecstasy from just beyond the club door – might come a little closer. Powerful, yet concealed.

‘Galore’ really was a turning point. A shift from the “rising star fusing classical training with electronic sensibilities” label to something more defined. A magnetic pop innovator. A tourmate to the likes of Caroline Polachek and Oneohtrix Point Never. A sought-after presence who might pop up on a Coachella stage in one refresh and over NTS Radio airwaves (or ice rinks) the next, eagerly followed by an increasingly vocal fanbase.

“It was a very introspective moment,” Mayniel reflects, speaking from her basement studio in Paris. “But I felt the need to take my eyes away from the inside and look more to the outside.”

“I think I grew up under a very romantic and patriarchal vision of what love is”

You see, something else has shifted since the mixtape’s release. Gradual realisations have snowballed into greater existential dilemmas that have pushed her to reconsider her relationship with the world. So where ‘Galore’ was so concerned with the lived and the dreamed, her debut album ‘Choke Enough’ taps into a new perspective: the observed.

Love, which has long inspired her the most, is something she’s had to rethink in light of all this. “I think I grew up under a very romantic and, of course, patriarchal vision of what love is and how you’re supposed to experience it as a woman and as a partner – and also as an artist,” Mayniel begins. “I’m French, and there’s a lot to say about French Romanticism, whether it’s composers or even in movies. I feel deeply rooted in all these references; I’m the biggest fan of Debussy, for instance, but there’s also a distance to be taken – not from Debussy,” she laughs quickly, “but from so many other things. It also has to do with my own family and the women in my family.”

She pauses. It’s a dark winter evening, and she’s deep in the run-up to ‘Choke Enough’, with promo, tour prep and a pregnancy (casually announced via an IG post) on her mind. But this feels like an important throughline: “After what I’ve experienced – and after having thought about love so much, and questioning the way I’m built for that – I couldn’t make music in the same way.”

You can hear this on a song like ‘Blade Bird’, the album’s wistful closer, which has the longing touch of a coming-of-age score. “You are what you are, and I feel like a cage,” she sings knowingly, putting in words the ache of loving someone you know you can’t hold onto. ‘Take Me By The Hand’, featuring Drain Gang’s Bladee, is equally tender and steeped in a ‘for better or for worse’-type devotion. He’s an ideal match for her brand of escapism – and, FYI, a “really sweet person”.

The lullaby-like ‘ICT’ (for ‘Ice Cream Truck’ – not the computer stuff) is also super sweet. But here, the vibe is less about love and more about a happy-sad nostalgia that stirs from the inside out, with her gossamer vocals conjuring images of fleeting thrills and chasing pleasure.

Like so many of us, Mayniel’s spent a lifetime scrolling through YouTube and social media, consuming all kinds of videos: “funny, sad, joyful, real, invented, art or not at all.” She started playlisting her finds a few years back, these little windows into other lives, snapshots of intense scenarios. People fleeing disasters. Packed-out crowds. And, yes, people chasing ice cream trucks. “It’s just an example of me seeing where I can find a dialogue between my life and all the ones around me,” she says.

In conversation, Mayniel’s an active listener and a deep thinker. Her words flow much like her music: winding and expressive, sometimes drifting around the lines but always circling back to something intriguing.

We learn a lot through these passing thoughts. For instance, the parallel between ‘Friendless’ (from her 2018 EP ‘The Rite of May’) and ‘Family and Friends’ (from ‘Choke Enough’) wasn’t intentional, but in hindsight, makes sense. One tackles intense relationships and the kind of blinkered passion that keeps you away from the rest of the universe. The other homes in on what’s simple and healthy in life, “something I’ve [become more] conscious of than ever”.

What else? Well, we discover she’s a music-first, words-later creator. This, too, makes sense. Her vocals never sound far removed from her productions – which, for the album, were led by Mayniel and Casey MQ. Rather, they rise from within to tell the same story and feed into this fantastical quality that touches so much of what she does. It’s that feeling of wandering through an untouched plain or getting lost in a role-playing game, where the journey is half the point. Her voice acts like a guide, or even a world-building tool: it moves the story forward, lifting you or breaking you, depending on where you’re at when you hit play.

While lyrics aren’t where she starts, they’re essential to the direction she wants to take. They ground her goal of crafting songs, not just tracks – it’s a subtle distinction, but an important one nonetheless. “Because I have a deep love for this format, I want to put words on it,” she explains. “But it’s not because I need to say those words. The emotions and energy I want to convey the most start with the music. And then, because I have this love for pop, I want to explore that as much as I can.”

She’s always been into pop music (and never distant from pop culture, either). As a kid in western France, she’d hear certain songs on the radio and feel an instant, instinctive pull. Even today, she still loves the same things for the same reasons. “For what it creates in my brain, what it brings to me,” she smiles.

“I was really into pop because of what it created with other kids – this feeling of togetherness”

Which songs, we ask? “Bruce Springsteen’s ‘[Streets of] Philadelphia,’” she offers. “The pads and the vocals… everything is so soft, very emotional, very calm. I also have this relationship with some of Phil Collins’ work, Enya, of course – [someone] my mum used to listen to a lot.”

Mayniel mentions her mum often. “She made sure we could draw everywhere, make music. We had our CD player in the room, the garden. [There were] endless possibilities to play and create,” she says, reflecting on her rural childhood.

Back then, she didn’t quite understand why certain sounds moved her – they just did, and that was more than enough. This was true of her formative relationship with classical music (AKA the foundation of her conservatory education, an era spent wrapped up in cello and piano). And especially true for pop, with all its effervescent collective energy. “I was really into it because of what it created with the other kids,” she remembers. “The fact we were all singing together, getting excited; the parties where everybody knew the words, this feeling of togetherness.”

That same collective energy is palpable weeks later in chilly Copenhagen, the first stop of her European tour, where she’s joined by French electronic musician Malibu. It may be opening night, but her fans are right there with her – singing together, getting excited and shouting for their preferred encore track. That it’s ‘Harvest Sky’ – an Underscores-featuring quasi-medieval trance banger in the best way – comes as no surprise; the floor had already rumbled beneath us when she played it earlier. “It’s a stadium anthem,” she grins.

Back in her Paris studio, she’d talked about how being a musician and being a performer aren’t exactly the same job. In fact, each “calls for different qualities”, and stepping into the solo spotlight meant thinking about presence and audience interaction – not just playing an instrument well, like she used to. “It’s been a journey to understand how to give the best of myself on stage,” she shared. “It’s been easier to feel like I belong since I’ve perfected my musical language.”

Watching her live, it’s as if she’s always felt this way, like she belongs here. She radiates ease, even as she jokes about forgetting lyrics because she’s “so pregnant” or throws in little surprises, such as a brief recorder moment during the jaunty ‘Thank You For Recording’. This is something she’s dreamed of doing since she was five, she confesses to the encouraging crowd, way back at the beginning.

As she returns to the mic, her words dance in the air: “When I get bored of looking inside myself, I always open windows at night.” In stepping outside herself – disconnecting to reconnect – Mayniel’s forged something new. A closeness that feels more touchable than ever. Her music, if you recall, has long been a window for others. And now, it seems, she sees it that way, too.

Oklou’s ‘Choke Enough’ is out now via True Panther.

Listen to Oklou’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.