BENEE

About BENEE

BENEE started making music in her bedroom in Auckland, which is basically how everyone starts now, but she actually turned it into something. Born Stella Bennett in 2000, she was messing around with GarageBand as a teenager and posted her first track "Tough Guy" in 2017. It got some attention locally, enough that she kept going.

The real shift came with "Soaked" in 2019. The song has this drowsy, conversational thing going on where she's just talking about being tired and wet, but it connected. Suddenly she had a hit in New Zealand and Australia, then it spread. The video of her in a laundromat looking generally over it matched the vibe perfectly. She followed it up with "Glitter," which was brighter but still had that slacker charm.

Then "Supalonely" happened. She released it in late 2019 with Gus Dapperton, and it was doing okay until TikTok got hold of it during early pandemic lockdowns. Everyone was literally alone, doing that finger-wagging dance, and the song went massive. It hit charts everywhere, got hundreds of millions of streams, the whole thing. It's catchy in that annoying way where you kind of hate yourself for liking it, but you do.

Her debut album "Hey u x" came out in November 2020 when she was still 20. It's all over the place in a good way—bedroom pop that doesn't stay in the bedroom. "Night Garden" is hazy and weird, "Snail" has this plodding bass thing that shouldn't work but does, "Happen to Me" goes full on melancholic. She got Grimes, Lily Allen, and Flo Milli on various tracks, which could have felt like label moves, but they mostly fit. The album showed she could do more than TikTok singles.

She kept releasing throughout 2021 and 2022—tracks like "Doesn't Matter" and collabs with Kenny Beats. Her second album "Lychee" dropped in 2023, and it's tighter than the first one. Less sprawling, more intentional. Songs like "Sad Boiz" and "2:32 AM" have this late-night clarity to them. She's gotten better at production, the lo-fi thing is more of a choice now than a limitation.

What makes her interesting is she never really changed her approach to match the success. The music still sounds like someone figuring things out, even when it's polished. Her voice is conversational, almost flat sometimes, like she's telling you something rather than performing it. It works for songs about being anxious or lonely or just kind of confused, which is most of them.

She's still based in Auckland, still releasing stuff fairly regularly, still in her early twenties. Touring when she can, showing up on festival lineups. Not trying to be anyone other than who she is, which in 2024 almost feels radical.

BENEE's shows are quiet in a way that feels intentional, not like she's lost control of the room. Crowds lean in rather than jump around. She's chatty between songs, self-deprecating, makes jokes about her own music like she knows how strange it is. The energy builds slowly if at all. People seem to appreciate just being in the room with her.

Known for Night Garden, Supalonely, Snail, Happen to Me, Geniuses

See BENEE Live