There’s a great theme in 2020s pop and alt-pop of softness-as-strength. The highest profile and thus perhaps most subversive practitioner has been Billie Eilish – but easily as potent is the English-Malaysian-Chinese singer-songwriter-producer Lucinda Chua. Everything on her debut album is as soft and smooth as a sigh, and yet it hits really hard. Electric piano, Chua’s pure voice, wind instruments, layered clouds of synth tone are all put into the service of hugely memorable songs that dive right to the core of themes like identity, grief, loss and loyalty.