Helen Sun’s lo-fi pop is all intuition

Helen Sun didn’t expect to blow up.

The London-based, Massachusetts-raised singer-songwriter put out her first EP under her own name talk with your Teeth in December 2025. “I just put it on DistroKid,” she tells The FADER while sitting outside in Brooklyn on a sunny day in September. “I was talking to another musician recently, and she said the worst time to upload anything online is right before Christmas because no one in the music industry is working. I was like, ‘Oh, that's exactly what I did."

Her lack of strategy was no hindrance. The EP's five simple yet utterly compelling pop-rock songs featured Sun’s nonchalant vocal delivery atop deceptively ornate production by herself and collaborator Hank Underwood. There’s an early-aughts quality to the songs: they’re cinematic, brooding, and rife with distorted drum breaks. They also carry a timeless immediacy, like on breakout “Shiny kindness,” where Sun casually coos lyrics with simmering sentiments, “Hurt yourself and call it blindness.”

talk with your Teeth came together in a way that could only happen when someone is creating for the sheer love of it. Sun wrote most of the songs while in high school and returned to finish them while studying abroad in Berlin (she was an architecture and literature student at NYU). Sun recorded the tracks in her dorm on a “shitty USB microphone” she found in her friend’s trash. “I was like, ‘No! Give it to me! I need it!’” she recalls. She’d record her demos, then send the sessions to Underwood and work on them over FaceTime while contending with the video lag. “It was modern day Postal Service.”

Once released, it wasn’t long until the EP began to pop off on streaming platforms. "I don't use Spotify so I didn't really understand what was happening. People were messaging me and I was like, ‘What's happening?’” she remembers. Her music, casual yet so cutting, has struck a nerve online and IRL: we meet while she's on her first U.S. tour, playing hotspots like Nightclub 101 in New York City and Milky’s in Los Angeles.

Sun, who left her job at an architecture firm in London at the end of summer, is now contending with the surreality of people “flying out” to see her. “At the end of the day, I'm still just me, and I'm the same person I was six months ago.”

Below, read The FADER’s chat with Helen Sun about creating talk with your Teeth, being inspired by Xiu Xiu and Fiona Apple, and how music is keeping her grounded.

The FADER: Where are you from?

Helen Sun: I'm from Natick. Massachusetts. People know [a few] thins about Natick. It has the biggest mall in New England and that mall also used to be a Twinkie factory. Nattick [appears] in Family Guy. And Jonathan Richman is from my town.

Did you grow up making music?

I grew up playing the piano, and I played the flute in band. And then I picked up the guitar in middle school. I did production when I was younger — very guitar-and-a-drum kind of thing on GarageBand.

Who did you grow up listening to?

I really liked Xiu Xiu when I was younger. [I liked] people who weren't afraid of noise. So Fiona Apple, Alex G, and Car Seat Headrest.

When did you start to produce music in a serious way?

When I started dating my ex. He was like, "I don't understand why you can play all these instruments and you're not making music?" But at the time, I was in college, and I had two majors, and I was working jobs all the time and had five hours of sleep a night.

And then, when I studied abroad in Berlin, it was the first time when I didn't have a job, and the courses there were so easy that I would spend a lot of time on YouTube. If I wanted to make a sound, I’d spend hours trying to figure out how to make that sound. [So] 2024 was when I got serious about producing something. I made a bunch of demos.

How did you make talk with your Teeth?

I wanted someone to mix it, so I had a friend introduce me to his childhood friend, Hank [Underwood]. And Hank's really good at production, and he helped me really flesh out the demo to be a lot more what I wanted it to be, as opposed to what I could figure out how to make.

Do you remember a musical reference that stood out while you were working on it?

Jane Remover has these glass sound-breaking effects that she uses a lot, and I really wanted to do that.

The EP is a coming-of-age EP, which makes sense, because you were just finishing college. What do you think was top of mind as you were writing the songs?

Well, the original demos were actually demos from high school. So it was a three-part process, where I had these voice memo demos from high school, and then I tried to produce them by myself in Berlin first, and then I took those produced demos, and Hank and I fleshed them out into what the EP is. It was like me in college and me in high school were working together, and I wanted to finish those songs before I moved on.

Did you still feel connected to the version of yourself that wrote those songs?

Definitely. I still think I am that person. Even though I've changed, I still think I am the kid I was. I don't think of myself as different persons from different years of my life, I think the me in the future is also me now.

Did you have a specific ambition other than just putting your EP out?

I really thought maybe 10 of my friends would listen to it, and that would be it. I really just wanted to make this project to make something, and prove to myself that I can finish a song. I was also quite anxious and insecure when I was younger, in a way where I could never put myself [out there]. When I released songs when I was younger, [they] were just random monikers on Bandcamp that no one could connect me to.

This is very different. I just wanted to be able to say, "This is me, and I made this, and I stand by it." And it's okay if people criticize or judge or don't like it, because I made it, and I'm proud of myself that I made something and put myself out there.

I was talking to Hank yesterday just about how surreal this all feels. Even if it's a mini-tour, we made it, and we just thought, "Oh, hopefully our friends will all find the time to hear it." And then meeting kids who are flying in from different states to come see my shows at a dive bar just feels really surreal and crazy, so I feel really lucky.

When did you realize people were listening beyond the people you already knew?

Kind of quickly. I put it out and it was normal for a week, and then suddenly kids were DMing me and messaging me, and people I went to summer camp with in middle school were messaging me like, "I saw your face come up on my Spotify."

How did you begin to navigate suddenly having a music career? What steps did you take to formalize it, and go on a tour, and do all these things that you're doing now?

I ignored it for a while. I was living in London, and I finished Uni, and I had my first job out of Uni at an architecture firm. It was also hard to make music after the EP dropped, because I was still working so many hours a week, so I was tired after work, and I was in a new city and I still wanted to make friends. So I worked that job until right before the tour started.

I literally just left that job because I wanted to finish Uni and do one year of a job. And [I worked at] a great company. The boss was fantastic. I’m just really glad that music was blossoming, because I cannot have that job. I’d show up and hide in the bathroom for two hours, and then go outside on a walk. I had all these stress rashes and it wasn't even a stressful job. It was just being there. Just waking up and knowing I have to go do this thing that I didn't want to do. Honestly, I don't know why I put myself through it. I just wanted to prove to myself I can do it.

What does your family think about your burgeoning music career? Do they understand it?

To be blunt, I was really suicidal when I was a teenager, to the point where I was hospitalized a few times. I think my parents just think, “If that keeps you alive and happy, then it’s okay." I don't think it's a career that they understand. But I've never had very pushy parents. Everything I've done as a kid was something I wanted to do. But at the same time, they are immigrant parents at the end of the day, but I think they were way more lenient than my friends' parents.

What else has stood out to you about touring and bringing the music to fans?

It’s my first time having the perspective of being on the stage, and not so much from the perspective of the audience. I haven't quite processed what it feels like when someone comes up to me after a show and tells me what [my music] means to them, and tells me that they flew here, or hands me a gift that they made for me. Things like that, I feel like I haven't quite processed. Because at the end of the day, I'm still just me, and I'm the same person I was six months ago.