Pop right now loves a glossy surface with something sharper underneath. Avery Cochrane’s new single “Toy Gun” lives right in that lane. It is upbeat, high-energy synth pop that invites you onto the floor first and then lets the story catch up.
Released September 9, 2026 as the lead single from her highly anticipated debut album on Sonderview / S-Curve Records, “Toy Gun” is about putting on a brave face for a partner who is not as secure as they look. Cochrane has been clear about the writing. She wrote it around the freedom of leaving an emotionally draining relationship. Acting “toughened with a toy gun,” she says, means playing the brave, solid one even when you are not sure the relationship is right.
That tension is what makes the track work as commercial dance pop and alt pop at the same time. The synths stay fun and inviting. The subject is not. You get the sparkle of disco-leaning pop without the song pretending everything is fine. If you only know her from “Shapeshifting on a Saturday Night,” this feels like the next chapter of the same voice: sharp, self-written, a little campy, and honest about desire and disassociation.
Teen Vogue already called the 24-year-old “your next favorite pop star,” and the résumé behind that line is real. Her debut EP, Male Validation and Other Drugs, drew comparisons to ABBA, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan for the songwriting and the celebration of queer femininity. Streams are past 20 million. “Shapeshifting on a Saturday Night” has more than 46 million views on socials and landed in Amazon Prime’s Off Campus. She has sold out four EP release shows, played Summerfest and SXSW, joined AJR for dates including two nights at Red Rocks, sat with BBC Radio 1’s Future Pop, and performed at the Stonewall Inn for Pride Month kickoff.
None of that arrived overnight. Cochrane is from Seattle. She played more than 100 shows there while working odd jobs — waitressing, singing at a seafood restaurant, caddying — to pay for studio time and photoshoots. After the move to Los Angeles she signed to S-Curve and kept writing every day. She talks about her songs as cinematic, the kind of tracks that could score a scene where someone crashes out after seeing an ex or two people find their way back to each other.
The timing of “Toy Gun” is not accidental. She has also announced the Weapons of Iridescence Tour, her first headlining run, starting October 3 in Washington, DC and hitting 13 North American stops including New York’s Bowery Ballroom, Chicago, West Hollywood’s Troubadour, and a Seattle homecoming at Neumos. A debut-album lead single plus a first headline tour is the classic pop handoff: here is the new era, come hear it live.
If you like alt pop that still functions as dance pop — hooks first, feeling second, no soft-pedaling the messy parts — this is an easy add. Cochrane is not inventing a new genre. She is tightening the one she already proved she can write.
What do you think of “Toy Gun”? Does the toy-gun metaphor land for you, or is it the synth-pop energy that sticks? Drop it in the comments.
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