Grimes and Aespa Go Deep on AI, Avatars, and the Art of the Music Video | Musicians on Musicians

A wildly original indie experimentalist and a group of Korean-pop superstars get together for the first time and find common ground and mutual admiration.

Grimes is a self-taught, self-produced artist who released her first album on a small indie label more than a decade ago. Aespa is a girl group formed during the pandemic by one of K-pop’s leading labels, composed of four extremely hardworking women — Karina, Giselle, Winter, and Ningning — who sing, dance, and have shot to superstardom over the past three years.

The pairing of the two artists might seem random, but consider this: Grimes’ love of K-pop goes back more than a decade, and she’s extremely interested in new technologies — including Elf.Tech, an AI music-software program that allows anyone to replicate her voice in their own music, and an AI girl group she created called NPC. When Aespa debuted during the pandemic, they made the most of everyone remote-living by introducing four virtual counterparts for the girls. The virtual members are part of carefully crafted lore woven into the group’s videos and lyrics, and they’re called the æ members — a letter, coincidentally, that’s used in the names of two of Grimes’ children.

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