North Carolina · synth-pop · art-pop

Hemlocke Springs

2 upcoming festivals ↓

Gleefully off-kilter synth-pop — the med-school-dropout-to-viral-star pipeline, '80s drama sung with total abandon, homemade pop that sounds like nobody else's.

Hemlocke Springs is the recording name of Isimeme "Naomi" Udu, born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1998 to Nigerian immigrant parents. She grew up in Concord alongside a brother who also produces music, and learned to make songs on GarageBand from a high school classmate. She later earned a biology degree from Spelman College before starting the graduate health-informatics programme at Dartmouth.

While in that programme, Udu began uploading songs to SoundCloud, deleting them almost as quickly. Her self-produced single "Gimme All Ur Luv," released in 2022, caught the attention of Grimes, and she followed it later that year with "Girlfriend," which spread widely on TikTok and drew quick press attention.

Her songs are largely self-produced and built from bright, brittle synthesizers, drum-machine patterns and vocal lines that swing between deadpan delivery and full-throated melodrama. The reference points run to 1980s new wave and synth-pop, but the arrangements stay deliberately homemade and unpolished, with abrupt structural turns rather than conventional pop scaffolding.

She released her debut EP, Going...Going...Gone!, in 2023, having spent the prior months writing with English producer Burns, and returned in February 2026 with her debut album, The Apple Tree Under the Sea.

Read more

synth-popart-pop