Mitski, Joanna Newsom, Wheatus, The Smiths, and more covered on new mixtape from Apollo

Between playing UK dates with Julianna Barwick and releasing their sublime Atlantis, Ascending EP, Apollo has been working hard on a follow up to 2015's brilliantly eclectic My Mixtape Brings All The Boys To The Yard.

Apollo adds their signature baroque charm to a thrilling mixture of tracks on My Beautiful Dark Mixtape Fantasy - from Mitski's raucous anthem "Your Best American Girl" to Wheatus' pop classic "Teenage Dirtbag". There's even a hymnal clash of Nirvana and Kanye West, with solemn keys and reverb-soaked vocals, and a beguiling, misty fusion of Zola Jesus and JoJo. The Knife, Joanna Newsom, The Smiths, Bat For Lashes, Stacie Orrico (we've already heard that one), and more are tackled via a mix of mash-ups and heavily altered cover versions.

"There were so many leftover ideas from my first mixtape that I felt I had to do another," Apollo says of the new collection. "I kept coming across songs I wanted to cover that had been released too late - or I hadn’t thought of - for me to do the first time round. Weirdly, although this was only half on purpose, this second mixtape’s more cohesive than its jukebox-style predecessor. There ended up being quite a lot of teen confessional pop (something I’m unabashedly a fan of), and most of the tracks are closer to the arch, maximalist, baroque pop that I make when I’m writing my own songs... although there are exceptions."