This year’s Leeds Festival welcomed a wave of fresh new talent, and one standout was rising artist ENNA. After her set on the BBC Introducing stage, we caught up with her to talk all things music.

Having only started releasing music earlier this year, including her latest single “billboard,” ENNA is quickly making a name for herself with her self-made sound and honest lyrics. We sat down to chat about her musical background, influences, and dream collaborations.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, musical background, etc?

ENNA: My name is Enna. I’m a songwriter and artist, and I do pop music—kind of, I guess alt-pop if we’re going down that—but I feel like that’s so broad. I guess what kind of music I grew up on, that’s kind of how my music has been shaped. I went through a big phase of huge pop girly, all the charts, etcetera. And then I went down a rabbit hole of just more singer-songwriter side of things, and I think I mixed… I like to say that I’ve tried to mix the two together. My songs are pretty pop hooks and stuff like that, but also a nice mix of singer-songwriter, quite conversational. So yeah, I tried to mix the two. I’ve only just started releasing this year, and it took a little while to try and figure out what kind of sound I wanted. And yeah, we kind of managed to mix the both, I think.

Who are your musical influences?

ENNA: This one, I don’t know—it might be quite obvious with my first song that I released. A lot of musical influences are insane songwriters that I love, like Julia Michaels. Who else do I listen to… I think she’s probably the biggest artist that I listen to who inspires me with writing. The smaller artists that I’ve been listening to recently, which I take a lot of inspiration—like production and things like that—I listen to an American artist called Oston. And who else have I listened to… there’s this amazing artist called Abby Holliday as well. They’re all American artists. I don’t think I listen to UK artists—I’m quite bad.

If you could describe your music in a scent, what would it be?

ENNA: I like that question. I don’t even know my own scent, I’m still trying to figure out what my scent is. I think, I guess it’s like the scent that I like. It’s like musky, not too feminine, not too masculine, just kind of in the middle. I don’t know… yeah, like musky but also a bit sweet.

Dream collaboration? 

ENNA: Let me think. Honestly, not to be basic, probably Julia Michaels. I’d love to get into a writing session and just pick apart her brain. 

You’ve just done your set, how are you finding the festival so far?

ENNA: So cool, I felt like cause we did Reading first yesterday and then Leeds today, we’re a bit more warmed up, but yeah, so cool. I think it went well. 

How did you find the fan response to your set?

ENNA: You know what, as someone who isn’t huge, I did peep over and I saw someone sing my first song in my set, and I was like, crazy, yeah, that made my day. Just like seeing some people, I like the intro stage cause it’s kind of open, and you could see people walking by and some of them stopping as well so by my end of my set, there was like a decent turnout, so very happy.