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Berlin-based DJ horsegiirL dubs herself the world’s first half-human, half-horse pop star, but she’d prefer you view her as just one of the herd. “Did you know that there are 350 breeds of horses in the world?” she advised on her breakout 2022 single, “My Barn, My Rules.” “And I am one of them!” Her debut EP, 2025’s v.i.p. – very important pony, fashioned Stella Stallion as both an anthropomorphic anomaly and an equine ingenue, layering sotto voce tales of cosmopolitan horseplay over ultra-lite hardstyle, gabber, and acid house. She’s one in a million, but also one of a million; her method dedication to a fursona-by-any-other-name is, at its heart, a way of communicating that it doesn’t matter where she really came from.
Her first full-length album, NATURE IS HEALING, finally matches up the music with the scope of her gesamtkunstwerk, landing on a lofty message in no small part inspired by an ayahuasca trip in Ecuador: We are all here together on Earth, and we should take care of it, and each other. Abandoning the bullpens of CircoLoco and Tomorrowland for poppier pastures, Stella trades her signature hard dance style for electro-pop pastiche, with help from a cannily chosen set of modern genre architects including Oklou collaborator Casey MQ, Zara Larsson producer Margo XS, and Papa PC Music himself, A.G. Cook.
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NATURE IS HEALING is both compulsively winking and totally woo-woo, with a tonal sweet spot perched atop the arc between Rainbow Dash and the “double rainbow” guy. The off-center bubblegum bliss of opener “351%,” which she co-produced with MQ and Cook, gives the PC Music diaspora its “Remember the Name” moment, introducing our heroine in increments: “10 percent cutie, 20 percent shock, 99 percent I get whatever I want.” Instantly reminiscent of a “Hey QT” or “Sweet Like Chocolate,” the song cleverly establishes the horsegiirL persona without forcing a narrative.
NATURE IS HEALING is best when it’s far outside the rave, frolicking through ’80s new age, ’90s pop, and 2010s EDM with the genuine excitement of someone who purportedly grew up on a farm. There’s the bass-boosted K-pop sheen of “AURA” (“like Minnesota, so fresh, so water”); the just-wide-eyed-enough Ray of Light worship on the title track and its even-crunchier counterpart, “rivers run free”; and the stuttered synth stacks on sapphic, Six Sex-featuring “that’s my beach,” which would get you laughed out of Berghain but could’ve ripped as the B-side to Ariana Grande’s “Break Free.” NATURE IS HEALING’s twin impulses to prance and meditate combine deliciously on “karma is,” which transitions seamlessly from hokey to hedonistic as it flows through a string sonata, a stomping Jersey club breakdown, and a final, gavel-like gong hit. (“Karma is the intent behind the act… karma is you’re still broke and I am rich.”)
Conversely, horsegiirL’s attempts at more standard club fare feel like a chore, missing the playfulness of “AURA” or “351%.” The ABBA-in-Ibiza arps of “hands hands hands” are too thin to befit her airy whispers; the rounded acid bassline driving “earth is turning” has more punch, but I still wouldn’t pick it out of a lineup. Sometimes, even her forays into the chillout room sound phoned-in. “Connect the dots” arrives at the trip-hop revival three years late by way of a well-trod metaphor about getting arrested for being too sexy, which feels like a bigger gimmick than any of her horse puns.
But mainstream dance music could use more outright silly joyrides like the delirious gabber thumper “an apple a day.” Folksy truisms clomp over a thundering bassline punctuated by an apple crunch, as a robot “doctor” voice rages against his looming obsolescence in the growing-and-glowing world of horsegiirL’s dreams: “I’m so angry/I’m the doctor/No one needs me/I’m the doctor.” It’s like mainlining a drawing by a seven year old who’s three Sprites deep: borderline nonsensical, totally committed, and just really funny.
The sincere, universalist ambitions of NATURE IS HEALING might disarm listeners most familiar with horsegiirL’s cheeky humor. But that’s what makes the music click: As one of the few working female pop artists to go all-in on an anonymous persona, horsegiirL’s very existence encourages the suspension of disbelief, and the use of some damn imagination. You’re already listening to a producer in a full-face cartoon horse prosthetic explain how to properly dose apples. Why not take the leap and envision a better world, too?
