swimming lessons, the debut EP from Paris-based artist barkou, arrived this October 25th, 2025, pulsating with the adolescence of the young songwriter and the world that shapes it. Recorded in Margot Whiteโs Paris studio, the project leans heavily into nature as metaphor and musical architecture, layered like water, soft as breath, yet simmering with emotional undertow. With influences stretching from Pomme to Fleetwood Mac to Billie Eilish, barkou and producer Margot White build a vulnerable, carefully sculpted, intimate and cinematic soundscape. She writes with the blunt honesty of someone cataloguing the contradictions of teenage life, all the media noise, fear of the future, little heartbreaks, and those terrifying, glittering moments of becoming.
swimming lessons opens with โrough journey ahead (intro),โ where a piano riffs patiently and builds before rising into shimmering, glimmering layers of sound. Like a dawn breaking, itโs sparking, floating, and merging with a faint, hymn-like choir. The track is delicate, deliberate, gentle and tense.
โwings burnt,โ featuring Rachel Gonzalez, dives straight into the emotional deep end. Heavy strumming guitars ripple over an immersive, almost overwhelming soundscape. Barkouโs soft, high, delicate voice evokes effortless theatricality, soaring and belting with a dark cinematic glow. She sings of a love she knows is dangerous but canโt abandon, intoxicated and spiraling, wanting to stop but wanting him more.
Later, โeleanor rigbyโ turns the EP colder and sharper. The music shimmers and engulfs, swallowing us whole. Barkouโs husky, grainy voice comes dejected and distant as she echoes, โAll the lonely people, where do they all come fromโฆ where do they all belong.โ Itโs a haunting reimagining, stripped of ornament, leaving only the stark ache of isolation.
With swimming lessons, barkou submerges us. The EP holds the uncertainty of growing up, the ache of wanting connection, and the resilience of learning to stay afloat.
Stay tuned because barkou has live shows coming up in Paris and an extended version of โsylvia plathโ on the horizon.
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Review by: Naomi Joan