Tearing Up the Rulebook: Inside Pretty Sick’s Bold Electronic Evolution on ‘Anarchy’

If you’ve been following Pretty Sick over the years, you probably fell in love with them for a very specific reason: that gritty, downtown New York City swagger. Led by bassist, vocalist, and primary songwriter Sabrina Fuentes, the project carved out a comfortable, compelling space in the modern underground by leaning hard into nineties-style grunge, swampy distortion, and DIY urgency. Their stuff felt like it belonged in a sticky-floored basement venue, surrounded by vintage fuzz pedals and heavy amps.

So when Sabrina started teasing what would eventually become her sophomore full-length album via Dirty Hit, Anarchy—anchored by its explosive title track—it became pretty clear that the old rulebook had been thrown straight out the window.

Instead of playing it safe and delivering a carbon copy of their earlier guitar-heavy work, Fuentes opted for total creative disruption. Let’s take a deep dive into the chaos, break down the new sound, and look at why Anarchy is easily one of the most talked-about alternative rock releases of the year.

Rewriting the Blueprint: From NYC Grunge to Digital Chaos

To understand why the title track “Anarchy” feels like such a massive pivot, you have to look at where Sabrina Fuentes started. Pretty Sick initially emerged out of the gritty New York DIY circuit, earning comparisons to classic nineties alternative staples like Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins. But artistic evolution is rarely a straight line. Following international tours, fashion collaborations, and creative shifts like the club-leaning Streetwise EP, Fuentes clearly wanted a canvas that felt less predictable.

Working primarily with producer Oscar Scheller (known for his work with artists like Lily Allen and PinkPantheress) over in Los Angeles, Fuentes built something entirely unexpected. “Anarchy” and the album surrounding it function as a maximalist rock-electronic hybrid.

Rather than relying solely on traditional guitar distortion, the music bridges indie pop, shoegaze, hip-hop beats, and hyperpop-adjacent electronic textures. There are crystalline synthesizers slicing through the mix, heavy club-ready low end, and a pristine digital crunch that coexists side-by-side with raw human emotion. It’s abrasive, it’s catchy, and most importantly, it refuses to let itself be pigeonholed. As Fuentes herself has noted, the driving philosophy behind the record is simple: doing things for yourself rather than trying to meet anyone else’s expectations.

Breaking Down the Tracklist: What’s on Anarchy?

Released via Dirty Hit, the 10-track journey of Anarchy showcases a songwriter pushing her boundaries while keeping that core vulnerability intact. Here is how the full album shakes out track by track:

1. Star (The brilliant track that initially set the stage for this era)

2. Needles

3. Anarchy (The explosive title track centerpiece acting as the album’s mission statement)

4. City Kid

5. Hyper Independence (A stellar pre-release single exploring the push-and-pull of self-protection and isolation)

6. UrNewImTrue

7. Sunset

8. Black n Blue

9. home2hide (A massive highlight built around a hypnotic bassline and trance-infused synths)

10. Prosperity

Tracks like “Sunset” and “UrNewImTrue” lean heavily into rhythmic experimentation, letting distortion act as an emotional outlet rather than just a wall of noise. Even with all the electronic window dressing, Fuentes’ distinct vocal delivery anchors every single second, proving that electronic production doesn’t strip away soul—if anything, it highlights it.

Taking the Chaos on the Road: The North American Tour

An album this big was never going to stay confined to headphones. To celebrate the drop of Anarchy, Pretty Sick hit the road for an extensive headlining tour across North America. Kicking things off in Washington, D.C., the run brings Fuentes and her live band through major cities, translating these massive, genre-bending hybrid tracks into a visceral live environment.

If you get the chance to catch them live, expect a set that seamlessly stitches together the raw guitar grit of their earlier days with these towering, electronic-infused soundscapes.

Final Thoughts: Why Anarchy Matters for Modern Alt-Rock

It’s easy for rock bands to get stuck playing the nostalgia game, endlessly recycling the sounds of decades past. What makes Anarchy so refreshing is that it looks forward instead of backward. Sabrina Fuentes took everything people loved about Pretty Sick—the attitude, the sharp lyricism, the unfiltered honesty—and dropped it right into a blender with modern electronic production.

It’s messy, it’s loud, it’s vulnerable, and it completely redefines what a modern rock record can sound like.