United States, – Sumi X is stepping into the national conversation with her new single “American Dream,” out May 15 and the first offering from her forthcoming EP American Tarot.

“American Dream” is mid-tempo electro-pop built around a cool, controlled tension, until the chorus arrives and military drums push up through the mix, turning the song into something that feels like a eulogy and a call to arms at once. It is a song about the fading promise of America, and the quieter, more intimate war it wages on the women living inside it.

“‘American Dream’ is a song about the death of the American Dream and the horrors happening in this country right now,” Sumi X says. “Some of those things are called out directly, like the ICE kidnappings in the bridge, but more broadly, the song is a place for people to feel less alone in what they’re feeling.”
Reaching for the flag directly, the chorus asks, “Look at all the stars, have they lost their shine?” while the lyric “Do you have a dream? ‘Cause I’m losing mine” carries the emotional weight of the record. The first verse doesn’t let anyone off the hook, examining the ways boys are conditioned from early on to expect women to be quiet, obedient, and grateful for the space they’re given.

“I can’t leave her” closes the record, a small phrase carrying the full weight of its resolution. “That’s where the hope comes in,” Sumi X explains. “It means we’re not going to leave America and all it should represent. We’re going to fight. But we have a lot of work to do.”

A creative reckoning drove the single into existence. After a decade of songwriting, Sumi X found herself unable to separate her art from the moment she was living in. “I got tired of writing heartbreak and dance-pop songs while so much chaos was happening in the world around us,” she says. “I felt like art should try to reflect the truth of the times we’re living in.”

Born Sumi Krishnan in Pittsburgh, PA, Sumi X is a former tech CEO and 30 Under 30 honoree who walked away from a thriving business career to chase the dream she had been carrying the longest. The daughter of Indian immigrants who built their American Dream from the ground up, she grew up watching ambition operate without apology, and brought that same energy into the music industry. Now LA-based, her sound draws influence from Adele, Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey, and Olivia Rodrigo, among others.

“American Dream” is available everywhere on May 15.

United States, – Los Angeles artist and songwriter Kiki T releases “Rich Kids” on May 15, the lead single from Aqua Eterna, her dark summer pop EP and the next chapter in the rollout toward ROWE, a fourteen-track project due this fall. A project built on dark pop with cinematic atmosphere and a female-forward point of view, ROWE has been taking shape through deliberate releases since “Dopamine” opened the era earlier this year. “Rich Kids” is the sharpest statement yet: a character study written from the perspective of a young woman who has traded youth, time, attention, and freedom for proximity to wealth, set inside a world that taught her those were the only assets worth cashing in, built by a culture the song has no interest in letting off the hook.

“Rich Kids” puts the main character inside a fantasy where nothing appears to have a price tag and she is quietly the one covering all of it. The men around her see her value in three dimensions, and there is something inherently temporary about that kind of existence. There is a limited window to secure anything real before the arrangement expires and she finds herself somewhere expensive and alone, still waiting for someone to pick up the bill.

The track has a pretty dark origin story. “I was traveling through Europe one summer and ended up at the American Bar at Hôtel de Paris in Monaco,” Kiki explains. “Monaco has this reputation for extreme wealth and high-end escort culture, and I sat there watching this older man invite three different women to his table over the course of the night. They were all competing for his attention and it honestly felt surreal.”

Underneath the character portrait is a harder question about desire itself. Youth, time, attention, and freedom are all currency in this world, not just money, and the trade only looks uneven in hindsight. Men are often told their value builds with age, power, and experience. Women are told theirs has an expiration date. When a woman’s early education is that beauty, desirability, and proximity to the right people are her primary assets, “Rich Kids” asks what happens when she has not built anything outside of that model, and whether the life she has been chasing was ever something she actually chose.

The track is also sitting with a loneliness the fantasy works hard to obscure. The world it describes looks full from the outside: access, proximity to money, men who notice you. Inside it, attention has been substituting for intimacy long enough that the difference is no longer obvious. That is the gap “Rich Kids” refuses to close.

“In a screwed-up way, ‘Rich Kids’ is really about the paycheck women are taught to chase,” Kiki T says. “The song plays with that fantasy, but underneath it’s asking whether those desires are actually ours, or whether we were conditioned into them by systems built to keep power exactly where it already is.”

“Rich Kids” pairs dark pop production with lyricism sharp enough to cut through the gloss, a precise opening statement for Aqua Eterna arriving this summer.

“Rich Kids” is available everywhere May 15. 
Aqua Eterna, coming soon. 
ROWE, coming fall 2026.

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