As one of the few Palestinian Canadian musicians with a significant online following, Toronto-based singer Nemah Hasan—aka Nemahsis—has always used her platform to advocate for her people abroad while sharing the first-hand experiences of hijabi women in North America, for whom simple everyday acts, like boarding an airplane, can lead to uncomfortable confrontations. Her activism has only become more vocal since the war in Gaza flared up in October 2023, upon which her pro-Palestinian social-media posts reportedly got her dropped from her label. The independently released Verbathim was written and recorded before that conflict broke out and, in contrast to the more topical statements of her 2022 EP eleven achers, this album is more about a young woman taking stock of her life, art and relationships. But much like Nemahsis herself, Verbathim is absolutely fearless, both in its willingness to reveal intimate conversations and interior monologues, and in its refusal to conform to easy categorisation. Occupying a space somewhere between Lana and Lorde, Verbathim spans wistful folk-song reflections (“old body, new mind”), edgy alt-rock/R&B fusions (“dead giveaway”) and spoken-word soliloquies that tee up operatic choruses (“spinning plates”). And then there are those magical moments—like “coloured concrete” and “stick of gum”—where Nemahsis’ soul-searching introspection and genre-fluid explorations coalesce into irrepressible alt-pop anthems.