Detour

<b>A pivot from campy Europop into the chaotic sounds of mid-2000s electro.</b> In January 2026, the German-born, LA-based pop star Kim Petras lashed out against her former label, Republic Records, claiming that her third album and its singles had spent six months stuck in limbo. That album, <i>Detour</i>, arrives on Petras’ own BunHead Records, her first on the label since 2020. A pivot from the campy Europop of previous albums <i>Feed the Beast</i> and <i>Problématique</i>, the album’s 13 tracks are steeped in the messy, chaotic sounds of mid-aughts electro, with heavy bass, distorted vocals and production credits that include Frost Children, Margo XS and the late SOPHIE (who appears on <b>“Basketball”</b> alongside BC Kingdom). Petras lusts over an unavailable guy on the starry-eyed bloghouse banger <b>“I Like Ur Look”</b>, gets freaky in the Polo Lounge over buzzsaw synths on <b>“Polo”</b> and loiters in gas station parking lots on “Jeep”, an ode to Americana co-written by Porches’ Aaron Maine. But the album’s sweetest and most surprising moment is <b>“Brutalist”</b>, a synth-pop memory of a since-demolished building that Petras’ architect father used to point out when he drove her to the psychiatrist’s office as a kid.