Fortuna POP! have signed London-based noise pop quartet Chorusgirl, with their self-titled debut album set for release in November. The brainchild of German songwriter, singer and rhythm guitarist Silvi Wersing, Chorusgirl blend the shimmering dreaminess of 4AD bands like Lush, the noir pop of The Cure and the bittersweet electricity of The Breeders across ten songs that sparkle with melody and pop nous but are stealthily subverted by something darker.

“Oh, To Be A Defector” opens the album, and as Silvi explains, is about “not taking part, about not playing everyone’s game. Of not belonging, of dropping out and of being ok with that and shouting that back at everyone”. It takes its cue from the opening sequence of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

After several years playing in bands that either split up or fizzled out, fed up with being someone else’s bassist and feeling like the eternal chorus girl to other people’s dreams, Silvi Wersing decided to strike out on her own. Naming her own band with a heavy dose of irony, she recruited Udo Westhoff (bass), Michael Boyle (drums) and Diogo Oliveira (lead guitar) to flesh out the demos she had made on her laptop, polishing the recordings to a hi-fi sheen in Bear Cave Studios in Cologne.

Dig beneath the surface of the songs on Chorusgirl and you’ll find heavy lyrics about saying goodbye, giving up, grief, alienation and loneliness. It’s all deliberately coded though, shrouded in the metaphysical poetry that Silvi does so well. As she explains, “Most things in life are complex, so lyrics should be too. I like subversion and the non-obvious. Like the best kind of horror films.”