Smerz's special brand of off-centre electronic warble pop is carried into the world by the collaborators, songwriters, musicians, and producers Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt. The duo's melancholic (and non-bucolic) album Big city life (2025) gathers a vivid collection of minimal SoundFont rock and R&B. With ghostly charm, the album's songs weave a story of romance and recklessness in rain-drenched city streets where puddles glisten with neon and swim with half-smoked cigarettes. Smerz deftly use nostalgia to paint their songs with a wispy curiosity, but their music is anything but backward-looking: they transform familiar sounds into new forms, birthing yet-heard kinds of poppy sensitivity and open-hearted experimentalism. Like dream-sequences, their music lives in the half-light between reality and reverie. At Rewire 2026, Smerz perform their critically acclaimed music accompanied by a band.