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 White’s 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 “rough journey ahead (intro),” where a piano riffs patiently and builds before rising into shimmering, glimmering layers of sound. Like a dawn breaking, it’s sparking, floating, and merging with a faint, hymn-like choir. The track is delicate, deliberate, gentle and tense.
“wings burnt,” featuring Rachel Gonzalez, dives straight into the emotional deep end. Heavy strumming guitars ripple over an immersive, almost overwhelming soundscape. Barkou’s 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 can’t abandon, intoxicated and spiraling, wanting to stop but wanting him more.
Later, “eleanor rigby” turns the EP colder and sharper. The music shimmers and engulfs, swallowing us whole. Barkou’s husky, grainy voice comes dejected and distant as she echoes, “All the lonely people, where do they all come from… where do they all belong.” It’s 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 “sylvia plath” on the horizon.
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Review by: Naomi Joan