Lola Coca
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Every week at PopCrush, we’re putting the spotlight on one up-and-coming act you need to know about. Why? So you can get on board early before everyone else and their mother jumps on the bandwagon…and so you can be that one friend in the group who’s always like, “Um, actually, I prefer their earlier work.”

If bratty British pop is your jam, and your playlist is overflowing with tunes from Lily Allen, Charli XCX, Cher Lloyd, and perhaps Lady Sovereign, allow us to introduce you to your new musical crush: Lola Coca.

Hailing from the seafaring city of Portsmouth, the now London-based artist creates tongue-in-cheek, ska-flavored pop (a la Gwen Stefani circa 2001) with biting lyrics and aggressive earworm melodies. Released in late 2015, her debut single, "Bad Girlfriend," best sums up the rising singer's signature sound: a dash of retro Copacabana attitude, a sprinkling of '90s hip-hop swagger, and a big ol' heap of deliriously contagious pop hooks.

"Bad girlfriend, I'm a bad girlfriend / And I don't know when your birthday is," Lola croons on the otherwise rap track, an unbothered, sass-laden ode to rejecting a boyfriend's assumption that receiving birthday sex is his manly right.

On "Love Songs" — which kicks off with a sweeping, sugary-sweet orchestral before morphing into a retro, mid-tempo pop ballad complete with vintage record static — Lola sings the unlucky-in-love blues:  "Love songs are for losers baby / And I have already lost." Relatable, and honest.

But it's "GQ," a bouncy track we previously highlighted as a "best song of the week" and called a "punchy, anti-dudebro anthem," on which the singer-songwriter solidifies herself as a rising, furiously unrelenting pop diva.

"Even on the cover of GQ / I am never going home with you / A leather jacket don't impress me," Lola singsongs on the tropical, piano-driven bop. Brassy, loud, and unapologetic — it's upbeat f--- you pop at its finest.

Considering Lola's been working in the studio with a team that includes established writer-producer Stefan Skarbek (Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse) and iconic mixing engineer Tony Maserati (Beyonce, Notorious B.I.G.), it's only a matter of time before the girl lands some magazine covers of her own.

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