Chinchilla

An acting household, a school band and a music-industry degree

Daisy Bertenshaw was born in London on 2 December 1996 to two working actors, and the stage was household business long before it was a career. At school she sang in a band with six friends. Rather than chase a deal straight out of it, she took the practical route: a creative artistry course run through the Academy of Contemporary Music at Metropolis Studios in west London, graduating in 2018 with a degree in Music Industry Practice. The paperwork side of the business was learned first, which matters to the story she is living now.

The Chinchilla name arrived with her first independent single, "Elements", in 2019, alongside a collaboration with the Estonian producer Noëp on "Fk This Up" that charted in Estonia. The debut EP Awakening followed on 17 April 2020, self-released through her own Chinchilla Ltd, and drew an early notice from Clash, whose Robin Murray described it as an empowering document from a pop polymath. A second EP, Moon Maintenance for Dummies, came on 13 August 2021 — this time with Columbia Records behind it, the first of the major-label chapters.

A talent-show detour, then the song that did the work

In 2022 she auditioned for series 12 of The Voice UK with "I Put a Spell on You". All three of will.i.am, Anne-Marie and Olly Murs turned their chairs; she joined Anne-Marie's team and was eliminated at the callback stage after singing Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity". The show did not make her, and the song that did arrived the following year without any of its machinery.

"Little Girl Gone" was released in April 2023 and became the pivot point of the whole project. It reached number 17 on the UK Downloads chart, number six on New Zealand's Hot chart, number 10 on the US Bubbling Under Hot 100 and number three on US Digital Sales, and it made her the first female soloist to debut at number one on Billboard's Emerging Artists chart in the six years that chart had existed. It has since been certified Silver by the BPI and Gold by both the RIAA and RMNZ, and by December 2025 had passed 190 million streams worldwide. The track is a snarling, low-slung thing rather than a radio ballad, which set the terms for what followed.

Flytrap, a soundtrack sideline and the heartbreak trilogy

The major-label run peaked with Flytrap, released on 7 June 2024 through Chinchilla Ltd with Island and Republic, trailed by "1:5" and followed by "Cut You Off" and a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain". "MF Diamond", out on 19 March 2024, came with a video built around older women rather than the usual casting. In the same period she turned up on the soundtrack to the Prime Video series My Lady Jane with "Do You See Me Now", written with Isobel Waller-Bridge, and later on Sky's Sweetpea with "Avoidance" in 2025.

That second soundtrack cut became the entry point to the most coherent body of work she has made. The Avoidance headline tour sold out quickly, and the material was gathered into Ok As I Am: The Trilogy, an EP released on 12 September 2025 built around "Ok As I Am" and "To Have & Hold" — anger, grief and self-acceptance tracked across three stages rather than resolved in one song. A live document, Live: Summer '24, followed on 13 December 2025.

2025 was also the year the rooms changed size. In June she opened three European stadium shows for Justin Timberlake, then supported G Flip across North America — a pairing that would matter again a year later.

Buying her own album back

The current phase began in the open. "Dog Eat Dog", released on 23 July 2026 through Chinchilla Music, announced both a self-funded debut album and the end of the major-label arrangement. Its subject is unusually dry for a lead single: the difficulty of writing when nothing is wrong. "I wrote it when I felt ok, just ok, and I was struggling with that," she said of it, after years of working from turbulence. On going independent she was blunter and more cheerful — it felt empowering to choose, and every win with a hand-picked team felt more earned.

"Viper" arrived in September 2026, written in Sweden with the producer Hampus and built out over months with drums, guitar and strings layered onto the original session. She described it as the peak stage of angry heartbreak, "pure betrayal rage", the things that are felt but not said. Reviewing it for Loud Women on 7 October 2026, Jimi Hargraves reached for Labrinth's Euphoria scores as a comparison for the atmospheric synths and choral writing, and put her vocal at the centre of why it lands.

The third single, "Irrevocably Changed", was released on 15 October 2026, written with G Flip and Aidan Hogg at G Flip's studio in Los Angeles. It runs a pleading vocal through warped electronics and rock textures; the distortion is deliberate and she has credited an obsession with the overtuned vocal sound on Bon Iver records. The song is about the dissociation of a collapse that the rest of the world ignores: the sense of a world stopping while everyone else carries on living. Limited vinyl and CD pre-orders for the album are open; a title and date have not been announced.

Where she stands in October 2026

The numbers are mid-size and climbing: over three million monthly listeners, one Gold-certified breakout, four EPs and no album yet at 29. The standing is unusual in that the commercial high point sits three years back while the critical reception is strongest now, and the recognition is coming from the pop-adjacent press rather than the charts.

The clearest signal of trajectory is the ticketing. The Bigger Rooms Tour was announced on 12 December 2025 with a presale that morning and general sale on 15 December, and the name was literal — she had been promising crowds at the end of sold-out Avoidance shows that the next one would be bigger, and said the tour was a way of sharing the growth with the people who listen. It ran through February and March 2026 from Dublin's Academy Green Room to SWG3 in Glasgow, Academy 2 in Manchester, Scala in London and Paradiso in Amsterdam, with first-ever shows in Budapest and Prague added as seven European cities were bolted on.

The autumn 2026 run is a different proposition: smaller, newer markets, carrying unreleased album material. It opened on 19 October at Pacific Electric in Los Angeles and continues through Lincoln Hall in Chicago on 21 October, Baby's All Right in Brooklyn on 24 October and the Underground at Toronto's Drake Hotel on 26 October, before a European leg from La Maroquinerie in Paris on 15 November through Berlin, Hamburg, Antwerp, Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna and Balingen, finishing at Analog Music Hall in Budapest on 28 November.