Underscores – Do It

Han’s selection has us saying, “We CAN do it”…

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[7.86]Han Li: Like much internet pop, the first listen invites a game of spot-the-influences: this time it’s 2000s pop guitars, K-pop synths, and hyperpop distortion. But what elevates “Do It” above pastiche is how Underscores works with texture. She stutters the beat like a skipping CD, adds a ding after each sequence like she’s served your order, and for the finale, fades everything out for two glorious, back-to-back drops. There’s a joyful sense of play to it all, such that when she says she’s “married to the music,” it makes all the sense in the world.
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Ian Mathers: This is enough of a bop she could have gotten away with less incisive lyrics, and the lyrics are good enough that the rest did not strictly need to go quite this hard. “My Guy (Corporate Shuffle)” is one of those songs I liked when we covered it and wound up liking a lot more after more time passed, which is probably part of why “Do It” is starting higher than it did, but it kind of feels like the sky’s the limit.
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Will Adams: “I just can’t do it,” says April Grey, referring to a laundry list of frustrations: dating profile tedium, the pressure of art as a business, relationships feeling ever more transactional. The music follows suit, zipping between glitchy stutters, harsh electro vworps, Neptunes-esque guitar stabs and an R&B breakdown for the bridge. It’s exquisite pop maximalism, and one of the best songs of last year.
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Nortey Dowuona: There’s a very lush musical moment at the bridge where there’s this layering of synths over each other with a new baseline played underneath, with the drum programming loosening up and allowing the layering to swallow up the vocals from Underscores, and it feels like a warm, tight hug as she sings “I’m married to the music,” her feathery alto melting over that high pitch synth riff.
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Alfred Soto: Twitchy dance jams are my thing, but the hook ain’t robust enough to overcome the blahs.
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Julian Axelrod: “I’ve made so many ‘getting my dick sucked’ songs, and you gotta pay your tithes, but I’m probably gonna be married soon, so it felt right.” That’s what Danny Brown said about “Baby,” an unusually tender hyperpop love song he made with the buzzy phenom Underscores. While April Grey helped Brown unlock a new level of earnest introspection, collaboration is a two-way street, and “Do It” feels like Grey’s first true “getting my dick sucked” song. It’s brash, bold and belligerent, selling Underscores’ new rock star persona with lewd come-ons and warnings not to fall in love. But as she reminds us, “I’m trying to run a business here,” and by the second verse the fantasy comes crashing down as Grey’s internal monologue drifts to streaming profits, parasocial fans and sexual discomfort. Suddenly, “I’m married to the music” reads less like a boast and more like a prison sentence. The only thing keeping the fantasy alive is the pulverizing pop machine whirring around her, a reminder that Underscores was meant to be a star — and everything that comes with it. One more quote from Danny Brown: “[O]ut of everyone I’ve worked with in the studio, working with her is the most impressed I’ve ever been. I’ve never seen nothing like that in my life.”
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Claire Davidson: “Do It” represents a slight evolution of the usual Underscores tropes: the signature pixelated hyperpop sound is still here, but with the addition of a sharp acoustic guitar groove for some added intrigue, complete with some galactic synth stabs that serve as stray bursts of color. This may sound like a recipe for sensory overload, but when paired with April Harper Grey’s quasi-ironic bragging about the ways her total devotion to music prevents her from embarking on romantic relationships, that larger-than-life construction feels apt. If anything, Grey’s affected detachment might be the song’s greatest inhibitor, given the tongue-in-cheek egotism of the lyrics — I’m left wishing that she would lean fully into the bratty (or, rather, brat) edge she’s displayed in her previous work. It takes a truly perceptive mind to birth a line as pointedly self-congratulatory as “Don’t you get it? / People get my lyrics tattooed on their bodies,” a kind of “don’t you know who I am?” posture for the era of Internet microcelebrities. Imagine its potency, then, if Grey delivered it with unabashed zeal; its blunt-force banger potential would truly break containment levels.
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