BANKS launches seductive new tune ‘Underdog’
BANKS is back! Well wait… She was never really gone now was she? The American electronic R&B singer and songwriter dropped her excellent sophmore album The Altar just a year ago and is already releasing her second single of this year. In April she surprised us by launching the painfully honest ballad ‘Crowded Places’, which was used for the season finale of Lena Dunham’s Girls and today we get the brand new track ‘Underdog’. It is not yet known if this will be a one-off single or the first single of a new era, but whatever this is intended for, it is a massive bop!

BANKS carefully moved into a more ballsy electronic pop direction on her second record, with steamy singles like ‘Fuck With Myself’ and ‘Gemini Feed’, and that is the route she continues with ‘Underdog’. That chorus is an absolute force of nature with her unchallenged falsetto, contrasting the more sultry vocals in the verses. The extremely layered production is said to be by the hands of Al Shux, with whom she worked on singles ‘Fuck With Myself’ and ‘Drowning’ as well. That bass line is absolutely seductive and the synths are prominent, of the intense and in-your-face kind. The backing vocals and harmonies during the last chorus are a nice touch, to help ‘Underdog’ reach a climax. BANKS seems to set the bar higher with every single release, but even judging by those standards, this is extremely good!