One of the digital era’s greatest byproducts has been the explosion of subgenres. By 2025, we’ve reached a point where people are literally playing games to guess whether a subgenre actually exists or was just made up on the spot. So, imagine the collective singular eyebrow raise when Copenhagen duo 100%WET describe their sound as “hypergaze.”
It’s a portmanteau, of course—hyperpop in the brat-green corner, shoegaze in the Loveless-red corner. Still, it’s not immediately clear on paper how these two positively-charged subgenres are supposed to work together as a hybrid. To their credit, 100%WET spends their self-titled debut album making the case for this very strange, but nonetheless compelling, new sound.
The duo— guitarists and songwriters Casper Munns and Jakob Birch—lay out the blueprint in the album’s opening suite, “’Lost Myself” and “Ether.” The former pits two staples of the parent genres against each other in sharp, unrelenting contrast, as churning, scrunched guitars pound incessantly against the clatter of sped-up breakbeats. When “Ether” takes over, it delivers the album’s first inescapable hook: a warbled chorus so heavily Auto-Tuned it nearly follows a microtonal Eastern melody. “I don’t know how to connect / Lost in disarray,” chants guest vocalist Sanna Heinstedt over the hypnotic beat of a drum machine. Her voice coasts on a reverb-heavy shimmer, ascending with each new hook. “Disarray” is putting what transpired gently, and yet somehow 100%WET are simultaneously finding a method to the madness.
The rest of the band’s eponymous effort plays out with a similar dynamic, one that echoes another Jekyll-and-Hyde composition: Babylon Zoo’s baffling mid-90s hit, “Spaceman,” which smash-cuts chipmunk disco with barbed industrial rock. Similarly, 100%WET channel-surfs across apocalyptic distortion, mesmerizing acoustic garden paths, and androids dreaming—sometimes within the same song.
The album’s lush centerpiece, “Two Packs of Red Apples,” stands out in particular. It weaves delicate finger-picking through a hazy, sparkling vocal that recalls gender-bending singers like Silversun Pickups’ Brian Aubert or Cigarettes After Sex’s Greg Gonzalez.
Of course, not everything thrown at the wall sticks. By the end of the album, 100%WET hit an antithetical dry spell with the underwhelming “Warmblooded.” At six minutes, it’s the longest track on the project and easily the least thought out. Its tepid, inconsequential electronic meandering makes for a deflating exit from what is otherwise an intriguing listen.
Munns and Birch deserve credit for thinking and creating outside of the box, however. They shot for the moon, and even though they didn’t quite hit it, they still landed amongst the stars. Even as the album’s overall quality dips toward the end, there’s absolutely no chance you’ll mistake 100%WET for anything else. Perhaps the most refreshing thing about the album is that it’s never generic. It makes a big splash, and you could do a lot worse than dip your toes in to test the waters yourself.
CONE Mag Score: 77/100.
Byline: David James Young