I heard TOVI first on an Exclaim! magazine playlist when “Nobody Ever Warned Me” first came out in December 2024. It’s such a banger — the blown-out beat almost has a Dilla sound to it, like it’s lagging by the tiniest fraction, and the vocal seems deliberately just a hair out of tune. The whole thing has an eerie Portishead vibe to it that I can’t get enough of.
TOVI is Rebecca Emms, from Red Deer, frequently of Toronto. She’s been in the game for a while, first as part of Girl Meets Bear, and as TOVI since 2018. In 2024 she released two songs, the other being “More For Me”, which she also released in French. It’s also bold and noir-ish with a killer breakbeat:
Her debut record is called I Keep Floating Away, released in 2022. It’s more varied in style than these two tracks, incorporating live instruments, record scratches and lots of synthesizers. The highlight on that record for me is “Storm Warning”, a short, jazzy, psychedelic trip-hop track:
As a recent guest on Alex Southey’s Your Worst Song podcast, she named “I Don’t Think We Can Be Friends” as her favourite of her own music. It’s a lot closer to a rock song than the ones above, and it’s also a banger:
No word on what’s next for TOVI in 2025, but it’ll probably wind up on this website too.
Further reading/listening
Your Worst Song with Alex Southey podcast:
