The great British film director Alfred Hitchcock, who, if he didn’t invent the modern thriller certainly set the mold, once said: “A star is someone the camera loves.” And by that definition alone Alexa Dark is a star.
And Spanish-American Alexa would particularly like that assertion, because her music — for which she is definitely a star, even though not many people know her yet — is shaped — not merely “influenced” — by film noir, that cinematic moodiness, that sensual, stoic resignation to fate and inevitable loss.
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Her songs are sultry and slow and sexy, her voice is lush and breathy and mature beyond her years, with slight jazz overtones. And her videos are film noir — teased out and teasing, with her as the only focal point, the camera entranced by her, not needing to go anywhere else.
A couple of years ago I asked her who her influences were, and she replied “Femme fatales like Lauren Bacall,” and Françoise Hardy and Nancy Sinatra — Dark does a great cover of “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” — along with Portishead and the Arctic Monkeys.
And the riot grrrls.
“When I discovered their movement and music in my early teens, I felt so understood. It was all so electric and daring, and definitely paved a new path for the rest of us women in music,” she said, adding she also took a lot of inspiration “from old movies, specifically film noir like The Big Sleep and classic old Hollywood films like Roman Holiday.”
She grew up in a soup of fashionable European cities that included London, Barcelona and Munich and as a young teenager played in clubs around London. She moved to New York at 19 and a few years later in 2023 released the seven-song Dark, Vol. 1, not on a major label because no-one was smart enough to pick her up, but independently, with help from a company called AWAL that arranges for distribution and, very fortuitously, allows musicians to keep control of their music rights.
Dark Vol.1 was part concept record, developing Alexa into a character that is, well, firstly very dark, and a bit deliciously villainous. “I should be the hero in the story I’ve written / But I’m watching myself / Turn into the villain” she sings on “Villain”. She also explores the notion of being her own romantic competition, as her lover falls more in love with the idea of her, a fantasy version that could never exist. That’s something she might actually have to get used to in real life.
She recently released a single and accompanying black and white video: “Alibi”, a glossily produced, slow-burning song sung in her throaty, wispy voice.
It’s a beautiful track, beginning with the hint of old-timey movie music, but quickly melting into a swaying beat and her intoning “You and your bad ideas / Whisper into my ear / Place a bet, take me to bed / I wanna disappear.” At the end of the video she’s slow dancing with a man we never clearly see. And then it fades to black.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
