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Kim Petras – “I Like Ur Look”: A Delirious Dive into 2000s-Coded Pop Psychosis

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Kim Petras – "I Like Ur Look": A Delirious Dive into 2000s-Coded Pop Psychosis

There’s something brilliantly deranged about Kim Petras’s “I Like Ur Look,” and I mean that as the highest compliment.

She’s essentially bottled that specific flavour of 2010 EDM-pop nostalgia (think early Kesha meets deadmau5 at a house party that’s spiralling slightly out of control).

What do you get? A three-minute fever dream about obsession, fashion, and trying to steal someone else’s boyfriend.

The Sound: Candy-coloured Whirlwind

Right from the jump, that bassline grabs you by the throat. It’s pulsing, sharp without being aggressive, and it doesn’t let up. 

The production feels like it’s been lifted straight from a time capsule buried in 2009, but it’s not a lazy throwback. 

Petras has joined forces with Margo XS, Frost Children, and Nightfeelings to craft something that sits in that sweet spot between crying in your car and dancing in your kitchen at 2am.

The track, which dropped on 14th October 2025 as the third single from her upcoming album Detour, builds like a slow-motion car crash you can’t look away from. 

There’s an 8-bit synth solo that pops up midway through, giving off serious retro-gaming energy, the kind that makes you nostalgic for a Game Boy you never owned. 

The mix gets progressively louder and more feverish as the song progresses. It’s like watching someone methodically lose the plot in real time, except it’s been precisely engineered to sound exactly this messy.

According to Kim herself (speaking to V Magazine), the song came together during a period when everyone around her was “constantly looking fab.” 

Her collaborators from Frost Children, her stylist Margo’s personal style, all of it fed into the creative process.

She’d built a home studio and was figuring out her own aesthetic, which fed directly into the song’s themes about fashion, identity, and wanting what you can’t have.

“I Like Ur Look” Lyrics: Psycho-Stalker Chic

Let’s talk about how absolutely mental that pre-chorus is. Kim’s not asking this bloke to break up with his girlfriend or even have a conversation about their feelings. 

She’s asking him to pretend his partner is dead. “Tonight, just pretend / That she’s dead and gone / Tell me y’all are done / It could be so fun.” 

It’s the kind of line that should probably raise red flags, but it’s delivered with such bouncy, effervescent production that you almost miss how dark it actually is.

The repeated hook “you definitely look better on me” flips the script entirely. She’s not claiming she’s prettier or cooler than the other woman. 

She’s literally treating this man like a handbag, an accessory that would complement her outfit better. 

When she sings “I wear my blush ’cause I’m a doll,” there’s this self-aware wink to the whole performance. She knows she’s playing dress-up. She knows this is ridiculous. She’s doing it anyway.

The second verse gets even more specific with its scene-setting. “Your Acqua di Giò on my sheets / But you’re already on a leash” paints this picture of stolen intimacy mixed with bitter resentment. 

That cologne detail is so precise, so lived-in, that it grounds the whole fantasy in something that feels uncomfortably real.

The Philosophy of a Pop Song Villain

There’s something quite clever happening here with the themes of transformation and authenticity. 

We’re all just collections of stolen bits from other people anyway. Every outfit choice, every affectation, every way we learn to hold ourselves in the world comes from watching someone else do it first. 

The song plays with this idea by having Kim literally dress up to become what she thinks this person wants, but there’s a strange honesty in that dishonesty. As long as you’re not being fake about being fake, you’re probably alright.

The Video: Early 2000s Chaos Energy

That moment when Kim changes her eye colour with contacts (genuinely unsettling if you’ve ever had to watch someone do this up close) becomes a metaphor for the entire project. 

She’s literally altering her appearance, her identity, frame by frame. Old computer screens flicker in the background like ghosts from 2003.

Is it irony? Does it matter when the whole thing feels like a fever dream filmed on a camcorder someone found in their parents’ attic?

The lo-fi aesthetic isn’t just nostalgic, it’s visceral. It makes the obsession feel scrappy and desperate rather than polished and calculated. 

Petras cycles through different looks, playing with identity and transformation, and the whole thing has this camcorder-era quality that perfectly matches the sonic throwback.

This is Petras’s first solo video in ages, and longtime fans will recognise the callbacks to her earlier singles era. There’s a sense of circling back to where she started, but with sharper teeth and better production values.

The Verdict: Welcome Back, Queen

Look, I’m not going to pretend this is reinventing the wheel. It’s pop music about wanting someone who’s taken, dressed up in 2000s production flourishes and served with a side of knowing ridiculousness. But it absolutely works. 

The energy is spot-on, the production handled by Petras alongside Margo XS, Frost Children, and the brilliantly-named Nightfeelings is punchy without being overwhelming (unlike some of the harsher, more metallic stuff Petras has experimented with recently), and that chorus will live in your head for days.

“I Like Ur Look” proves that Petras knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s taken a decade-old sound, given it a hyperpop spin courtesy of her Frost Children collaborators, and created something that feels both familiar and fresh. 

It’s the kind of track that makes you want to put on your best outfit, apply too much blush, and cause a bit of harmless trouble.

Sometimes pop music doesn’t need to be deep. Sometimes it just needs to be fun, catchy, and slightly off its rocker. “I Like Ur Look” ticks all three boxes with room to spare.

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