We’ve seen this play out most in relation to dance and electronic music. It pays to trade in 5-second loopable licks. Take, for instance, PinkPantheress, an artist from the musical hinterland of Bath, England, who outshone the rest of the U.K. scene by turning a TikTok experiment into virtual dominance.
Now consider berryblue, an upcoming pop musician from Oak Cliff. Having recently released her debut album, Uh Oh, Xochilt Fonseca is finding her footing in the alt-pop world through a careful balance of authenticity, catharsis and digital know-how.
berryblue has approximately 200,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Her tracks have been featured on the planet rave and anti-pop playlists (sporting nearly 450,000 and 745,000 saves, respectively). Curated by Spotify staff, these lists can propel tracks into the stratosphere. Fonseca has slowly built momentum through her activity on TikTok (with about 300,000 likes).
Taking a step back from the numbers, however, we can see how Fonseca’s journey into electronic, dance-style music came to be IRL: She grew up in Oak Cliff.
“I’ve always gone to music school. Fourth grade to high school. I kind of begged for it because I really wanted to take piano lessons,” Fonseca says. “It was just a great way to express my feelings.”
A theme of emotional release returns throughout Fonseca’s story. Her family supported her attending Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, a public magnet school that has nurtured some of Dallas’ most recognizable musical voices, from Erykah Badu to Roy Hargrove.
Fonseca’s family had one musician in it.
“My dad used to be a karaoke host," Fonseca says. "He would always sing. Big voice. My mom also had a great voice but she was more shy about it.”
After graduating from high school, Fonseca moved to Los Angeles. With no family and few friends in the area, it was a significant shift. But Fonseca found community through online mutuals and her music. By that point, she had been working on the album for two years (it would be three in total before its release).
“The album became my therapeutic way of, like, making all of it up," she says. "So every time I would go through something, I would write a song about it. And it wasn’t anything forced, either. It was more like secondhand nature where I was going through something. Just like, I’ll make a song about it… Over time just slowly kept building and [when] the album finished [it] was such a release. Because I was like ‘Oh, I can listen to this over and over again.’”
This catharsis ranged from dealing with COVID in high school to difficult relationships. The track "WhatUDo2Me" has an '80s disco feel with serrated bass line. In an imagined dialogue with her former “baby,” the song relates the experience of breaking oneself to be perfect for another.
“I’ve always been a people pleaser," Fonseca says. "One of the first times I thought I was in love with someone — I was very young, you know — I tried to do everything for them.”
Disco Queen
While the album works through serious emotional experiences and difficulties, it isn’t heavy or moody. Instead, Fonseca remains energetic, even cheeky.“It’s still fun, like all the tracks are still upbeat, still dance even though I was so sad at the time," she says. After making the song, it made me kind of heal.”
There’s a comedic sensibility in Fonseca’s music and her personality. It’s the right kind of mix of authenticity and irony for an artist navigating digital audiences. She gave up her older, brooding artist name, “Poor Blue,” for the sweeter berryblue (derived from, literally, the sight of a blueberry muffin).
Her TikTok videos have a cartoon-like sensibility at times. Maintaining that distance prevents Fonseca from becoming overly burdened or attached to the vagaries of internet success. It allows her to experiment with sounds and styles as they fit her vision.
The recent steps have been fast, by most standards. Fonseca moved from hit singles, such as "Enjoy Yourself," to finishing her album in August 2024 to her November 2024 album release and subsequently went viral on Reels. In March, she opened for Nashville-based pop singer Kenzie Cait on a national tour.
“The process was effortless,” she says of this transition. “It felt right.”
Cait’s more earnest, Taylor Swift-style of produced pop contrasts with Fonseca’s closet-recorded indie Y2K stylings. Video-game sound flourishes and lush synths abound in her tracks, and Fonseca notes that she’s a fan of Daft Punk and Neon Indian. She’s put together her vision of ethereal vocals and driving bass from these sources. It’s important to her to “never compare to anyone else.”
And it is difficult to compare berryblue to anyone else. She’s moving in a space that only a few have ever traversed. For such unknown terrain, Fonseca is also moving elegantly. About her hopes for the future, she notes her regular rehearsal schedule for touring. It’s a different animal and requires to her sing while running. She has a few dream collaborations to aim for: Toro y Moi, Kaytranada and Pharrell Williams.
And on the subject of future releases, she smiles.
“I’ve already got the music recorded,” she says.
