At the Afterparty With Lykke Li

June 5, 2026
Digital Cover Feature
Photography:
Pierre Crosby
Styling:
Christopher Nowak
Words:
Gemma Lacey

For much of her career, Lykke Li’s music has been defined by longing. Her songs have lived in the space between desire and fulfilment, heartbreak and hope, forever reaching towards something just beyond the horizon. On The Afterparty, her sixth studio album, she turns the gaze inward. The result is a surprisingly punk 24-minute record that finds her reckoning not with a lover, but with herself.

 

 

Lykke Li is our digital cover story for June 2026

Cover 1: SAINT LAURENT by ANTHONY VACCARELLO suit

Cover 2: MAGDA BUTRYM jacket, SAINT LAURENT by ANTHONY

VACCARELLO trousers, JACQUES MARIE MAGE sunglasses.

VERSACE jacket, skirt & belt, GUISEPPE ZANOTTI shoes

There’s a narrative to this record that calls to mind After Hours by The Velvet Underground, another ode to the sweet exploration of the world whilst everyone sleeps and the discovery and melancholy it holds. Lou Reed’s tender portrait of loneliness unfolds with a strange duality: sadness and acceptance, darkness and sweetness existing side by side. There is no grand resolution, only the quiet recognition that dawn eventually arrives and life continues.
“I find we’re in an era where everyone is talking about their higher self,” she says. “Fuck that. This is an album dealing with your lower self.”
The central theme of The Afterparty is someone unafraid to plumb the depths and truly reckon with themselves. At forty, Lykke appears less interested in transcendence than excavation. The heartbreak that once fuelled some of her most beloved work has given way to something broader and more uncomfortable: ageing, shame, revenge, motherhood, ambition, desire and the contradictions that make up a life. The Afterparty unfolds like a single night out – a dusk-to-dawn odyssey through dive bars, spiritual reckonings and existential comedowns – but beneath the album’s nocturnal setting lies a deeper exploration of what it means to confront yourself honestly. When I tell her that the record feels like a turning point from longing towards self-reckoning, she immediately agrees. “Oh yeah,” she says. “Very much so.”
Unlike many artists who arrive armed with manifestos and meticulously crafted narratives around a new release, Lykke speaks about creativity as something closer to compulsion than strategy. Every album, she insists, arrives as a necessity. “People always laugh when I say, ‘This might be my last album,’ she says. “But I’m very aware of what a feat it is. Inspiration, having an idea, having the strength to really make an album – it’s like pushing a boat over a mountain.” After each record she returns, as she describes it, to being “back in sweatpants”, uncertain whether another album will ever materialise. The process remains difficult, all-consuming and far from guaranteed. “I wouldn’t make it unless I had to make it.” 
It’s an increasingly unusual perspective within a music industry that often rewards consistency over inspiration. Throughout our conversation, Lykke returns repeatedly to the idea of intuition as both compass and survival mechanism. When I mention the contrast between her often euphoric, danceable arrangements and lyrics that wrestle with despair, she shrugs off any suggestion of calculated duality. “It’s just intuition,” she says. “You’re cooking. It needs balance. You go dark, you need to go really light.” Lykke recalls working with David Lynch, who offered advice that has clearly stayed with her. “I was asking him questions about why things worked and he just said, ‘I don’t know, Lykke Li. If it feels right, it feels right.’” The permission to trust instinct rather than explanation remains central to her practice.
Perhaps that’s why she finds today’s increasingly strategic music landscape so alien. “I find it cynical,” she says bluntly. Looking at younger artists navigating an industry driven by algorithms, streaming metrics and social media performance, Lykke describes feeling like an observer rather than a participant. “Everyone’s so strategic in a way that I’ve never been. I don’t think about streams or intros or hooks or tempo. I just go into a room and do something based on feeling.” Commercial success, she says, has always arrived by accident. “I’ve never made a choice based on what should be happening.”
The tension between art and commerce is hardly new, but Lykke speaks about it with a weariness that feels distinctly contemporary. In an era where attention itself has become currency, The Afterparty almost feels like an act of resistance. At just twenty-four minutes, the album stands in stark contrast to the sprawling tracklists that dominate streaming platforms. “It’s a protest,” she says. “Against these long, long albums that are just taking up space to play some algorithm game.” The decision wasn’t born from a lack of material. Lykke estimates she wrote around fifty songs during the process. “I could have put so many more songs on it, but then it wasn’t sharp.” Instead, she wanted the album to function more like literature. “For me it’s like an Annie Ernaux novel. It’s supposed to be consumed from beginning to end.”


LOEWE jacket, EPUZER leggings, LUBELLO FIRENZE shoes 





SAINT LAURENT by ANTHONY VACCARELLO suit & belt, THE ROW shoes, DANICA STAMENIC rings  



MAGDA BUTRYM jacket, SAINT LAURENT by ANTHONY

VACCARELLO trousers, JACQUES MARIE MAGE sunglasses.





The record’s concise structure also reflects another reality: motherhood. Lykke is candid about the challenges of creating ambitious work while raising children, particularly as someone who remains involved in almost every aspect of her projects. “I write, I produce, I mix, I master. I do the creative direction. I do the costumes. I do everything,” she says, laughing. “I’m stretched to my full capacity.” There’s no self-pity in the observation, merely pragmatism. “The truth is there is a real cost to motherhood.” When people question the album’s length, she seems bemused. “Either this or nothing,” she says. “Do you know how hard it is to even get dressed in the morning with small children?”
If The Afterparty reckons with loss, however, motherhood isn’t the only loss under examination. Youth looms large throughout our conversation. When asked what she’s grieving, Lykke doesn’t hesitate. “Youth. Freedom. Even success in some ways.” As a younger artist she occupied a role she wasn’t fully conscious of at the time – the exciting newcomer, the fresh face, the discovery. Six albums later, that narrative has inevitably shifted. “You’re no longer the new young kid on the block.” Yet unlike many artists confronted with ageing in public, Lykke appears remarkably untroubled by the passing of time itself. “I was completely miserable when I was young.”
What disturbs her instead is the panic she sees around her: the beauty industry, social media and the relentless pressure placed upon women to remain unchanged. “I don’t know how many more articles I can read about facelifts,” she says. Referencing Edvard Munch’s The Scream, Lykke describes contemporary culture as one giant expression of existential panic. “The world keeps telling me that I should be feeling that way. But I don’t.” For an artist whose work has often explored desire, her relationship to ageing feels refreshingly unsentimental. Rather than mourning youth, she seems increasingly interested in authority. Throughout our conversation, she speaks with growing conviction about the experiences that come with age – the confidence to trust her instincts, the perspective to challenge industry expectations and the freedom to reject narratives that no longer serve her.
That perspective extends to the way she views younger female artists navigating today’s landscape. Without naming names, Lykke describes working with emerging musicians and feeling concerned by the pressures they face. “You’re putting so much emphasis on sex,” she says. “That’s what you’re selling.” After a pause, she adds: “To me that’s dangerous.” It’s a striking observation from someone who has spent much of her own career being projected onto as a symbol of desire. Yet Lykke insists that even in her twenties, she was focused less on being perceived as sexy than on being taken seriously. “That was never the goal.” Now, she says with characteristic humour, reaching forty has changed the equation. “Now I can wear a G-string if I want to.” The difference, she explains, is intention. “It comes from a completely different place.”
The distinction feels important. Much of The Afterparty is concerned with agency – who gets to define you, who gets to tell your story and what remains when external expectations fall away. The album itself functions as a complete world. Lykke describes it as a journey through a version of downtown Los Angeles that feels closer to Gotham City than Hollywood, populated by damaged characters navigating the liminal hours before sunrise. “It’s a literal afterparty,” she says. “But it’s also spiritual.” The protagonist moves through bars, apartments and conversations with God, hoping simply to survive until dawn. It’s an evocative image, and one that mirrors the record’s emotional landscape. Beneath its references to nightlife and excess lies a meditation on endurance itself: how do you keep moving when certainty disappears? How do you continue creating when perfection remains out of reach?

CALVIN KLEIN dress & hat

TOTEME dress, DIOR hat



Near the end of our conversation, I ask whether she’s still hard on herself. The answer comes instantly. “I beat myself to the ground every single day,” she says, laughing, though not entirely joking. “I don’t know if it’s a nice thing.” The comment leads us to Martha Graham, whose writing on artistic practice famously described creativity not as satisfaction but as perpetual dissatisfaction. The idea clearly resonates with Lykke because, despite everything she has achieved – the acclaimed albums, the devoted audience, the longevity – she still approaches her work as though something remains unresolved.
Perhaps that’s the real revelation of The Afterparty. Not that Lykke has stopped longing, but that the object of that longing has changed. The search is no longer directed outwards towards romance or salvation. It has turned inwards, towards understanding. Towards becoming.
As Martha Graham once wrote: “There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.” Listening to The Afterparty, that blessed unrest feels present in every moment – not as a flaw to overcome, but as the very thing that keeps an artist moving forward.


Photography: Pierre Crosby
Stylist: Christopher Nowak
Words: Gemma Lacey
Editor-in-Chief & Casting: Maria Joudina
Talent: Lykke Li
Makeup: Johanna Nomiey at Home Agency using Submission Beuty
Hair: Maranda Wildlund at Home Agency using Bumble & Bumble
Stylist’s assistants: Sav Green & Leah Garcia
SEE SIMILAR POSTS