Mallrat has been breaking barriers since her influential debut -- accumulating over half a billion career streams in her discography and scoring many ARIA Platinum awards. The project of Grace Shaw has shared stages with Maggie Rogers, Post Malone, King Princess, Conan Gray; collaborated with Azealia Banks, The Chainsmokers, BENEE, Blu DeTiger, Cub Sport; a late night TV debut on The Late Late Show with James Corden; headline world tours amongst globally recognised festivals Reading and Leeds, Austin City Limits, Laneway, Splendour In The Grass, Listen Out and boasts multiple triple j Hottest 100 entries. The adored songwriter and producer's work catapulted Mallrat across the globe with critical acclaim from NPR, Stereogum, NME, NYLON, PAPER Magazine, The New York Times, Billboard, Noisey and more, further affirming Mallrat as a beacon primed for the world stage in 2025, off the back of a Zane Lowe premiere for latest single Hocus Pocus.

Anna Shoemaker’s sophomore album, Someone Should Stop Her, opens with a hard-earned truth. “You could say that I’m officially cutting ties with the way I used to be,” she sings over the strummed guitar of “Real Life Baby.” In the two years since the Brooklyn-based pop confessionalist released her genre-spanning debut album, Everything Is Fine (I’m Only On Fire), she honed a new sound and resettled her roots (albeit temporarily, for now) in Los Angeles. It’s been a season of shedding bad habits and learning to trust her instincts, with Someone Should Stop Her showcasing the most self-assured music of her career. “The most freeing thing has been following my gut,” she says of her journey making the record. “Even if it's hard - the right thing to do isn't necessarily the easy road.”

Like with many great transformations, it began with a road trip. It was fall 2023, and she was in the middle of a U.S. tour with Portland singer Aidan Bissett where she began to find a new sense of confidence. Far away from the defined NYC circles she’d established, she was discovering “who I am without anyone,” she says. During one late-night session, alone for the first time in months after tour was over she penned “Back Again,” on the floor of her parents home in Idaho and experienced a breakthrough: the windows-down, guitar-driven ode felt synonymous with the independence she was experiencing. She and producer Constantine Anastasakis decided to use that track as their North Star. In January, she hit the road again, driving 12 hours to Nashville with Anastasakis to finish the album. All the while, in the background, her life in New York City was falling apart.

For Anna, the Nashville sessions were at once breaking new ground and a return to her roots. Gone were the synths and electronics she was used to. She and Anastasakis prioritized natural instrumentals like pedal steel, and just her and her guitar, taking her back to her early bar-playing days. The result is 12 tracks that sound as wide-open and wild as the fields she drove by to get there. “The most important parts of this album are about running away,” she says. “‘Who am I if I'm not in New York? Who am I if I'm not with my boyfriend? I don't want to be so reliant on these [identifiers].”

In May 2024 she went through a breakup and the other big story of the record revealed itself. Anna looked back and noticed the pattern: her songwriting had also traced a rift waiting to crack open.

In that regard, Someone Should Stop Her is foremost a breakup album, built around Anna’s visceral songwriting that demands to be shouted along to. Over the folk-y swing of “Iced Coffee,” Anna belts that she’s leaving him, before doubling back to declare, “I’m lying, I love you more than money.” “Horse Girl,” a galloping ballad, cleverly and devastatingly positions Anna as a cowboy’s ever-returning steed. Her feelings are messy, contradictory, and torn straight from her diary. “I throw away what I write/ in case it turns out I might mean the things that I’m venting/ genuinely pretending,” she openly admits on “Close To The Sun.”

But between the lines there is another story: of Anna re-finding herself as a musician. On the happy-go-lucky “Gas Station Parking Lot,” she’s crying but only because she’s in mourning — she’s finally chosen herself over someone else. “I feel like all my 20s, I was willing to bend so much for men. Suddenly, I felt like I snapped out of it. I don't wanna do any of this shit. I really don't wanna compromise at all,” she says. With her voice floating atop the breezy production, you get the sense this is how she always wanted to sound. It just took her two road trips to get there.

This era of non-compromise has ushered in new changes to her life, like her choice to leave New York for L.A. She sees it as her ultimate rejection of the glitzy and glam persona she had created while living there. “I don't wanna be the unattainable girl on stage, in her heeled boots, swinging my hair around and playing. I just want to be whatever I actually feel like in the moment,” she says. She hopes her songs could be more like therapy sessions, or a walls-down, late-night talk with a big sister. It’s different, but as she sings herself on “Fields,” “It feels good being so damn far from where I should be.”