Here’s how you can help musicians and artists who’ve been affected by the Los Angeles wildfires.

The FADER’s guide to FKA twigs

Remember that time she pushed the mainstream forward with her vision?

The FADER’s guide to FKA twigs Jason Mendez/Getty Images/ design by Cady Siregar

After emerging over a decade ago, FKA twigs has become one of the music industry’s foremost iconoclasts, blurring the lines between singer, dancer, producer, visual artist, collaborator, actor, spokesperson, and activist. But it’s her music that’s always been at the cutting edge of what the future holds. Across two studio albums and one mixtape, she’s created a space where her avant-garde vision can be buffed and primed into something that pushes the mainstream forward. It makes sense that visionaries like Arca, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Dev Hynes, U.K. club pranksters Two Shell, and pop juggernaut The Weeknd have since rushed to collaborate.

Merely listening to twigs, however, is to miss half of her arsenal. She’s not just a singer but a doer: self-directing music videos and pushing her body to its limits (See: her 2019 video "Sad Day," for which she mastered the sword-art discipline wushu. Also: pole dancing.) That philosophy has only continued with Eusexua, her third studio album dedicated to a “state of transcendence evoked by art, music, sex, and unity” that she's brought alive through raves and impeccably choreographed music videos.

In the lead up to its release, brush up on your twigs knowledge and read our definitive guide to the major flashpoints and key moments of her career to date, as well as some of the iconic performances, videos, and images she created along the way.

ADVERTISEMENT

EP1 & EP2: The early, experimental era

The memory of FKA twigs’ EP run is carved into my brain like the gashes in the car she vandalized for the “Breathe” music video. She was an artist doing something that felt like the final transition from the PBR&B era — everything from the Weeknd’s groundbreaking mixtapes to the Aaliyah meets Warp Records-style of Kelela — into a place that could never be relegated to the blogs’ best-kept secret.

2012’s EP1 sounded like a sunrise on an ice planet, an explosion of steely greys and cool hues. Co-produced by Tic and Liam Howe, an original member of trip-hop pioneers Sneaker Pimps, the four-track release introduced twigs’ esoteric sensuality; they were bedroom jams with mattresses billowing with incense smoke. EP2, released the following year, took this sound to a more vivid place. She co-produced the four new songs with Arca, the electronic producer who, at that time, was still in her mutant hip-hop era. Everything is bigger: the cinematic eroticism of “Papi Pacify” seeps through your headphones, while the existential despair of “Water Me” resonates from its first trembling notes. twigs has explored many sonic arenas in the decade-plus since, and her EPs proved that she would be a masterful guide in every one. —Jordan Darville

“Two Weeks”: The crossover single

If her EPs were the sound of an artist navigating her way through the underground, LP1 marked twigs arrival as a 21st century pop star. Key to that step forwards was “Two Weeks,” the album’s stunningly dramatic lead single.

It starts with twigs “higher than a motherfucker, dreaming of you as my lover,” though that dream is disturbed by the reality that the person she is singing to is already with someone. There’s an aerodynamic quality to the song as it swoops and falls in time with twigs and her efforts to extricate her love interest. (“You say you're lonely, I say you'll think about it” and “I can fuck you better than her”). Throughout it all, though, twigs remains imperious, spirit-like in the way she floats yet is dizzied by the full scope of her emotions. As a song it’s transcendent, but as an introduction to twigs’ whole world, it’s the perfect calling card.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Sum Bout U”: Her most intriguing collaboration

Having spent the better part of the past decade explaining why “Lifestyle” and “FlatBed Freestyle” are generational tunes, I was unfazed, though no less enthralled, by my first encounter with Bronx rapper 645AR, whose helium falsetto wormed its way across my feed in the weeks preceding COVID-19 lockdowns. Less than seven months later, 645 resurfaced in the zeitgeist with “Sum Bout U,” a collaboration with FKA twigs that reignited debates on whether his AutoTune-free chirps were genius or garbage.

The pairing isn’t as peculiar as onlookers made it out to be — consider that both Arca and LUCKI have credits on LP1 and 645AR seems to fall between the two — but the final product is uncommonly thrilling, a breathy suite of squeaky frequencies that slip and squelch against each other like lubricated latex on ONLYCAMZZZ.com. And when twigs glides up against the ceiling of her register to crow, “So let me put my sugar up on youuu,” time seems to hang in the air. Insert additional credits to continue? Don’t mind if I do. —Vivian Medithi

Magdalene: Her most introspective album so far

twigs’ relationship with celebrity has been an often painful one. Her time dating actor Robert Pattinson showed her, and the world, the toxicity that often underpins obsessive fandom, with racist Twilight obsessives free to roam in the space that the publicity-shy couple left vacant.

Magdalene, released in 2019, is twigs’ response to that period and the ultimate breakdown of their relationship. It features some of her most naked, harrowing songwriting: “They’re waiting/ They’re watching/ They’re watching us/ They’re hating,” she sings on “Cellophane.” Taking the story of Mary Magdalene, a follower of Jesus who was later seen as a sinner, as inspiration, this is the album that heralded twigs descent from the heavens and saw her stand in front of people and share her raw humanity for the first time.

An underrated music video

Every track from her 2022 mixtape Caprisongs, her most joyous project yet, arrived with a music video. But none were so immediately stylish as “papi bones” with Shygirl, where they wore head-to-toe Burberry and pushed baby goats around London in matching strollers.

That time she out-shined Usher during his Prince tribute at the 2020 Grammys

When she told a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee that she built her own deepfake

"In the past year, I have developed my own deepfake version of myself that is not only trained in my personality but that also can use my exact tone of voice to speak many languages," she said, arguing that musicians must have control over how their voice and image are used by AI.

That time she worked with Atlanta director Hiro Murai on the “Sad Day” video

A sick NPR Tiny Desk recorded in a north London church
A picture they tried to ban


This 2023 Calvin Klein ad starring twigs was briefly banned in the U.K. for being “irresponsible and likely to cause serious offense.” The Advertising Standards Authority quickly backtracked on its decision after twigs highlighted the double standards in how men and women are seen when advertising underwear.

The FADER’s guide to FKA twigs