Lupin is the sound of an arrival. Across eight tracks of subverted, expansive pop, Jake luppen's solo debut is all sharp edges, a fractured self-portrait pieced together through left-of-center, pop maximalism. Although luppen Rose to prominence as a vocalist and guitarist in St. Paul's beloved indie outfit hippo Campus, the songs on lupin feel like meeting him for the first time. He puts it succinctly: "with this record I wanted to get to the point, and say how things were, as opposed to dancing around them." written mainly in breaks during a Sprawl of 112 shows for hippo Campus' Bambi from 2018-2019, lupin was an unexpected path to confidence. It also offered an escape from the Grind of endless touring and a way for luppen to process major and stressful life events directly through songwriting. Inspired as much by Charles xcx's pop 2 as it is Tears for fears, '80s new wave, and Prince, the genre-bending record holds true to a desire to make '80s music filtered through modern technology. Featuring synth and programming contributions from jim-e stack and Buddy Ross, lupin weaves together fragmented drum loops, Swooning falsetto, tangles of synths, and sharp guitar-lines, the final product is an off-kilter pop-sheen, one luppen said was guided more by intuition and feeling than anything else.