When A24 announced it was moving into music, the question everyone asked was: who? The studio that made grief beautiful in Moonlight, made chaos elegant in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and made Midsommar somehow the feel-good horror film of a generation — who would they trust with the sonic equivalent of that vision? The answer was Sophia Stel. A 24-year-old from Vancouver who records in the basement of a DIY venue. And that choice tells you everything you need to know about where A24 thinks music is going.
Solitaire Rules
The name of her second EP, How to Win at Solitaire, came from a moment that is almost too perfect as metaphor. Stel googled how to play the card game and found nothing useful — vague advice, no guaranteed outcome, just the sense that you have to figure it out yourself. That is her music in a sentence. It does not arrive with instructions. It does not tell you how to feel. It sits next to you and waits.
The original EP was written, produced, and recorded entirely by Stel in the basement of Paradise, a DIY venue in Vancouver where she was essentially living and working. The Deluxe Edition, released earlier this year on Pack Records, adds three reworked tracks that expand the project without betraying it. Mura Masa strips "I'll Take It" into an acoustic-rock space that somehow makes the song feel both bigger and more intimate. Tommy Genesis shows up on "All My Friends Are Models" with a verse that should clash with Stel's restraint but instead locks in perfectly. Cecile Believe — one of SOPHIE's closest collaborators — pushes "Everyone Falls Asleep In Their Own Time" toward an art-pop euphoria that keeps the original's melancholy intact.
The A24 of It All
There is a reason this partnership works, and it is not just branding. A24 has always been drawn to artists who make you uncomfortable in productive ways — who leave gaps in the narrative for you to fill. Stel does exactly that with music. Her production is minimal but never empty. Dreamy synths layer over lyrics that offer observation rather than resolution. She has been compared to Ethel Cain, FKA twigs, and Imogen Heap, and all three references land without fully capturing what she does. There is something cinematic about her songs, yes, but it is the cinema of small moments — not the score to the car chase, but the sound of the drive home after.
What Comes Next
Her debut full-length album is due this year, and her Europe and North America tour kicks off today, April 10. The timing of the tour launch aligning with this moment feels intentional — Stel is building something slow and deliberate, the way her songs build. No viral TikTok strategy. No feature-stacking for playlist placement. Just the music, the basement, the quiet ambition of someone who knows the game is solitaire and is fine playing it alone.
The question is not whether Sophia Stel will break through. She is already doing it. The question is whether the industry will understand what she is doing before she outgrows its categories entirely. A24 understood early. The rest of us are catching up.
